


but i have twice the heart

by molotovhappyhour



Series: The Force Shall Free Me [8]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, M/M, Star Wars AU, implied Erwin/Mike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about stars is that they're basically a trillion different lights at the end of a billion different tunnels. One of them has to be theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> oh man. i just love eren and levi and star wars.

Eren already hates it here.

(It had played out sort of like a daytime holodrama—the Grandmaster and Levi had left him here, like a child being dropped at the first day of primary school by a neighbour, except it hadn’t been very much like that at all. There hadn’t been any crying and Eren hadn’t clung to Levi’s leg. Erwin hadn’t soothed any hurts or promised that they’d be back.

But they’d left him there all the same, the Coruscant Security Force headquarters looming large and bright and formidable.

All Nile had done was look at him, sigh, and turn around to walk them into the building. They hadn’t said a word to each other. Eren almost wishes that they had.)

“This,” Nile’s hand pats against his shoulder, stinging against skin with its force, because he’s not a gentle man—though if he were ever _going_ to be, it certainly wouldn’t ever be to Eren, “is our very own Jedi consultant, Eren Jaeger.”

There are three people in this small division of the CSF, barring Nile and himself. The room itself holds only six cubicles and a coffee machine, the walls dominated by white spaces for the holoprojector around which the cubicles are built. None of them look particularly thrilled, and Eren doesn’t need to peek into the Force to know that they _know_. Where he’s been. What he’s been up to. Why he’s here.

(But there’s the one with the red hair who’s at least _trying_. Even though his walls are up and he’s making himself as small as he can, he’s never been particularly skilled at keeping things _out_ —and he can feel her smothering her distrust inside her chest.

The thought is kind—but it still makes his tongue curl against a bitter taste.)

“He looks young.” There’s a derisive sniff from one of the two men in—whatever division this is. He hadn’t been paying attention, if Nile had even _said_ anything, and he supposes he missed out, somewhere. “Does he even know what he’s doing?”

The words are knock-knock-knocking against his teeth before he gives them permission to leave his mouth, but Eren figures that he doesn’t want to be here _anyway_. It’s not like there’s much harm in stepping off on the wrong foot _deliberately_.

(The simple fact might just be that Eren doesn’t _like_ this guy. His mouth twists in a weird way and there are deep furrows in his face that belie how young he feels in the Force—and who is this asshole to ask about _his_ age?)

“Don’t talk about me like I don’t know my own qualifications,” Eren throws his words at the man’s face. “I’m _twenty-two_. We can’t all wear our ages like we rolled around in a glitterstim den.”

The anger flashes in the Force before it shows on his face and Eren _swallows_ it. Savours the itch of dry firepowder as it leaves a burning stripe down his tongue, toward his stomach. And he sets his jaw in a challenge around the feeling.

“You’re a little shit already, aren’t you—“

“Auroro,” Nile uses his Captain voice, and all three humans present snap a little straighter, though _Auroro_ looks like he’s going to shit himself—or throw a punch. Eren knows to whom each reaction belongs. “Don’t. _Jedi Jaeger_ doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. If you react now, you’ll never stop.”

(He knows it’s his imagination—but he can feel his teeth cracking when he grinds them together, against the word _Jedi_ , against Nile’s tone, against this _whole thing_. But he keeps all of that to himself.

There’s nowhere for all those feelings to go, anyway.)

“Now.” The hand on Eren’s shoulder doesn’t move. “Jedi Jaeger, welcome to the Underworld Police.”

There’s a broken piece of machinery inside him, _clickclickclick_ ing as it tries to jumpstart Eren’s failing brain. But his head is already under and he’s drowning in the smells of the undercity, his skin prickling underneath the imagined droplets of filthy water that dribble down from the city that barely remembers that there's an ugly world beneath the lights and sounds and smells of wealth.

(Jean isn’t here to distract him. And Levi isn’t here to save him, not this time.)

“Come with me,” Nile’s hand on his shoulder becomes a guiding force as he’s filed back into the corridor, thin streams of people walking back and forth as their work bids them, and he plants them both closest to the wall. The officers on duty barely even react to move around them. Eren can feel the focus humming low behind his eyes, trying to chase out the bile that won’t stop rising at the back of his throat.

Nile snaps his fingers and brings Eren’s attention to his face.

(He tries to relax his jaw. It feels locked in place, too tight to move.

How could Erwin _do_ this to him?)

“This is going to feel really shitty to you, kid,” Nile speaks softly but not gently, and Eren doesn’t know if it’s meant to be a comfort or if he just doesn’t want anyone else to hear. “This probably feels like betrayal.” ( _you would know all about that_ , Nile’s eyes say—but at least the words don’t come out of his mouth, so they can pretend he doesn’t feel them.) “But after the Grandmaster explained your skillset, I figured this is the best place for you.”

A pause. Eren doesn’t say anything, and so Nile lets himself continue.

“You’re not being put in the Underworld division because I think you’re a problem.” Though, of course, it would be fair to consider Eren a problem, after all the shit he’s helped put Nile through. But perhaps the sentiment is nice. “But you’ve got experience that _none_ of this force has. You know how it feels to be down there in a way that most officers and Jedi don’t. Erwin says it’s easy to get blinded down there, but _you_ don’t have that problem.”

( _no_ , Eren thinks to himself but doesn’t say, because it’s all about what you don’t say, it’s what stays behind the teeth that’s the kicker. _it’s up here that’s blinding._

Eren thinks of Levi. Of being blinded. Of being opened. Of being drowned. Of feeling loved.

It’s a lot to feel all at once.)

This time, Eren clears his throat to reply, lifting his arms to hide his hands in his sleeves before dropping them away, remembering that his robes are back at the Temple. He can’t hide here. “I don’t have that problem, no. Grandmaster Smith’s right. I don’t get lost in the—I don’t get lost down there.”

Nile seems to consider him, though Eren doesn’t care to ask what it is, exactly, he’s considering. And he sighs. “So this is why I put you here. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” and Eren leaves off the _sir,_ because he doesn’t _really_ work for Nile, and it’s a small, but personal, victory. “We’re clear.”

Eren isn’t free when Nile lets him go, but it _feels_ a little better as he goes back into the cramped office and the three people who are making the air around them wobble with their curiosity. He wonders, off-hand, how many questions he’s going to have to answer before everything stops feeling like an interrogation.

But these are cops, after all.

This is what they do.

(But there's the quiet sensation of being reached for. And maybe that will make this easier.)

-

It already feels empty at the Temple.

But that’s per the norm these days, Levi supposes.

( _“come back”_ )

But that doesn’t mean he has to _like_ it, by any means. It leaves the corridors feeling—cold. And empty. There’s a certain song that rings into the Force when Levi reaches out and finds what he’s looking for, the birth of a whole new galaxy tucked inside the body of a person who doesn’t quite know where the galaxy inside him is going. Its rhythm settles into his bones and curls inside his stomach, spreading warmth and ( _dread_ ) comfort through his body ( _where is Eren_ ).

That is, when he can find what he’s reaching for.

Recently, Eren has been doing his best to shut him out. Which is—which _could be_ fair. Except—except Eren doesn’t _do_ that. He’s not muffled. There’s nothing that can muffle something so— _expressive_. It’s similar, he guesses, to trying to contain the mass of a dying star, wrapping in all the nebulous gases that will one day give birth to a new star system. But no one’s been able to do that. There’s been countless research done on the birth of new systems, and not once as anyone been able to _stop_ it. To silence it.

So Eren shouldn’t be able to do that either. It shouldn’t be possible.

(There had been that split second on Omwat—Levi had _felt_ it—where Eren had just up and disappeared from the Force entirely, as if he’d been killed, as if he was gone, and that isn’t something that Levi thinks he can handle, not after bringing him home—)

“Oh, good,” Erwin is speaking, his presence still and chilled over, a planet covered in ice, hiding the smooth surface of the sea beneath it. “You’re where I thought you’d be.”

Levi doesn’t even bother to open his eyes. “You’re aware that I’m meditating? Seeing as how that’s what this chamber is for. Meditating. In silence.” His hands are folded inside his robes, his fingers tensing on either wrist, and he itches to have something to do with his hands.

“You weren’t mediating.” The Force shifts and Erwin takes a seat beside him, smoothing out his pants if the hiss of skin over fabric is anything to go by. “Meditating involves a sense of inner peace that you’re not displaying.”

At this, Levi does open his eyes, dropping his hands into his lap along with the pretense of meditation. It was more for the sake of posture than anything, anyway.

(He had been trying. But for some reason he can only center himself properly when Eren’s being noisy beside him.

Kid could never sit still long enough to learn to calm his mind.)

“What did you want?”

There’s a pause and Erwin steeples his fingers, the gesture of a Grandmaster in Thought. But he’s always done that with his hands, even before he’d taken over this shitty job. Levi’s struck by how glad he is that he has better things to do with his own.

(He thinks of lacing fingers—and stops.)

“I wanted to see how you were,” Erwin says when he gets the words in the order he wants to say them. “It’s been tough on you.” Another pause, though this one is for effect. Levi knows him better than to think he doesn’t know what he’s going to say in its entirety before the words leave his mouth. “And Eren.”

(Ah. This isn’t a business visit. This is a personal visit. Levi isn't sure he likes that.)

“Not particularly,” Levi folds his hands again to hide them. “I’m sure we’ve seen worse, at some point. We’ve gotten into a lot of shit deeper than this.”

“Right,” Erwin doesn’t call his bluff, folding it away into his mind to use for later, and Levi regrets attempting to hide the truth almost immediately. Maybe they can talk about this without dancing later. But, even with that regret hovering over him, right now, speaking in tongues is easier for them both. “I just wanted you to know that there’s a space for both of you here.” A pause, still planned, and Levi lets it linger before Erwin continues. “The Order is better for the both of you being in it.”

Levi blinks at the floor beneath the pillowed cushions, the speckled marble dancing like stars. Eren had mentioned that when he was younger, dragging his fingertips over the white spots as if the universe could be touched just there. He’d spoken, a little, of the way the universe looked to him, at the time. He doesn’t know why he’s remembering it now.

“That’s pretty hefty considering the reputation we seemed to have gotten ourselves.”

A shrug that Levi catches reflected in the floor. “The Force ebbs and flows where it wants, and so does people’s approval. We’re going to fix it, regardless.” A hum, low enough to blend in with the dim glowstrips on the walls. “I just wanted you to know.”

Levi only speaks when Erwin pushes himself up to leave.

“I’m tickled, Grandmaster.” But he pauses, just as carefully planned as Erwin’s had been, if done with less finesse. “But thanks.” Gratitude is something that strokes Erwin's ego in the way it wants to be stroked, and it's probably most appropriate to put it here. It could, later on, benefit them, somehow.

(But Levi hates the games of politics. Makes him feel like he's back in the business of taking bounties, having to kiss up to the slime of those who feel like they're above him.)

Erwin smiles, probably, though Levi doesn’t catch it, staring instead at the disorganized starchart that decorates the floor. His fingers trace the path that Eren’s had, connecting the dots into constellations. His finger had gone here—to here—to here—and he’d spoken softly, which is a rarity even still.

The door opens and closes with another set of sighs, and Levi is alone again. Not alone again. Not really. Not when he finds his mark.

(Which he _does_. He finds what he’s reaching for in the Force and sighs, his fingers stilling against the marble of the floor. He breathes in and tastes the heat of a newborn galaxy.)

His hands find their way back into his lap and fold together. Noise echoes inside his head, the murmur of the Force moving around him—and there’s the shouting sensation he’ll find on any forsaken rock in the known universe.

Levi sits. And he waits.

(But he’s never been good at that.

Maybe Eren had gotten that from him.)

-

Petra. Auroro. Gunther.

The names aren’t difficult to remember, but repeating them to himself to learn them properly is easier than thinking about all the filing he’d been stuck with, all the rooting around in CSF servers, all the tech work that he’d never, _ever_ wanted to do in all his life. That’s _Armin’s_ area, the sort of shit _he_ likes.

He’s never been so sick of data-mining.

 _But_ , he tells himself as he walks into the Temple, feeling the city-planet quiet around him when he does, it’s better than being in the sublevels. Just _thinking_ about it makes his skin feel loose and greasy, like it will slough from his bones as if already rotted, not bothering to wait until his body had bothered to die. A lot of the undercity feels that way, like a rotting corpse that forgot it was supposed to have keeled over already, the flitnats already poking and prodding at the bloated skin as if waiting for it to split down the middle.

(His nose wrinkles at the imagery. Fucking _gross_.)

Eren pauses in the atrium, eyeing the marble and the sweeping arches, the architecture that gives the feel of infinite space in a finite building, making everything swide and livable and _free_ —a lie, maybe. But the truth isn’t exactly a comfort, now, is it?

He _should_ , probably, take the turbolift to the Council Chamber. There, he will have to form a verbal report, recorded by a datapad therein, handed over to a droid, and submitted to the Archives for posterity. His _other_ option is to not do that. In _ignoring_ the Council, there are, naturally, consequences. But at least he wouldn’t have to talk about being assigned to the _Underworld_ , and he wouldn’t have to talk about how his clothes still stink of the distrust that bled into the Force around his ankles as his new coworkers spoke to him. He wouldn’t have to talk about anything at all?

( _you’re being unfair_ , says a small voice that sounds a little bit like him. And he knows that, at the very least, Petra and Gunther are trying very hard not to poison the air around them with anger.

Eren considers, if he gets out of this sentence free and clear and happy, maybe he’ll ask for tips on how not to store it in his chest.)

A star rises before Eren can decide on where he’s going, shedding bright light in the corner of his brain as he looks away from where his eyes had fixed on an arch and spots Levi walking toward him. His robes billow around his ankles, his boot-steps impressively light as they hit the marble floor.

(There’s concern tucked at the corners of his mouth. It makes it hard to swallow when Eren looks at him.)

“Welcome back,” Levi says like those words aren’t _loaded_. “How was your first day at school?”

Eren rolls his lips over his teeth to hide a smile, trying to swallow the stupid, giddy feelings of parallel thought. He wonders who had thought that the drop-off this morning in terms of primary school first, wonders if they’d thought it at the same time.

Stops wondering the instant he feels Levi wrapping around him in the Force, the sensation vibrating against his skin like a murmur. It’s hesitant—an offer—but it’s a relief to feel Levi relax when Eren reaches back almost instantly, a reflex borne of practice and proximity, though there are bits of metal, glass, and bone that scrape against his insides when he reaches like that. It burns like guilt, makes his teeth ache.

The words that want to come out of his mouth are _I’m sorry_. But the ones that hit the floor between them instead are “terrible. I don’t think any of the other kids like me.”

A smile touches Levi’s mouth. The urge to kiss it is overwhelming and all-encompassing and he knows that Levi can feel it. “Maybe you should play nice.” He doesn’t say anything bout what he knows that Eren's feeling. But the mumble of the Force starts to wiggle its way into his bones. It tightens inside the column of his spine.

“Maybe I don’t wanna.”

There’s a twinge that makes his chest hurt, and Levi’s hand mimes his presence in the Force. He’s reaching.

(He remembers something like this, on Mandalore, when Levi had been worried about some elusive terror that Eren hadn’t quite figured out yet, might never figure out. But Levi had leaned close, and for a blissful moment everything about them had seemed obvious, had seemed natural, had seemed balanced.)

This means something.

Eren’s there to meet him, with his fingers—with his _fingers_ , not just the noxious cloud he knows he is inside the Force, but with his body, with his skin.

(Levi’s fingers are cold, like marble.)

This _means_ something.

“So,” Levi speaks carefully as the sleeve of his robe falls over their hands and hides them. “How about you tell me about it?”

“About what?”

A pause, the arch of an eyebrow. “About your first day at school.”

“Oh,” and this time Eren pauses, and the urge to unlace their fingers and pull his presence back inside his body is overwhelming. For one heartbeat. For two. “No. It’s fine.”

This is the moment where it’s left well enough alone, like all the other ugly feelings that sit inside his lungs and make it hard to breathe sometimes, their soupy thickness making every inhale sound like a drowning gasp and every exhale sound like a cough. It’s how it goes when you want to keep the ugly parts of you a secret.

But something flickers on Levi’s face, something a little different than before. “Or. You could just tell me.” Eren’s eyes wander elsewhere, from the planes of his face, before they snap back when Levi keeps speaking. “Talk to me.”

A pause. A shake of the head. There’s another flicker, and then—

“On three.”

“Levi.”

“One.”

Something that tastes like sweetened cream rises up in his throat and it’s so fond that Eren could maybe just—combust. Right here. Or.

“Two.”

“ _Levi,_ ” but there are ugly things in him. And he’s just about tired of Levi seeing them.

“Three.”

Levi waits.

Eren lets him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something will have to give between them eventually. All Levi has to do is wait. And he thinks he can find an infinitude to his patience when it comes to Eren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cry often about eren and levi

It is Eren’s executive decision to keep Levi waiting for as long as possible.

There is a part of him that _knows_ Levi was doing Eren a service when he offered to talk—he was offering Eren a safe space for his words to go, a place to deposit his feelings and have them attended to. Levi was offering Eren something that the Order has a habit of being unable to provide, was offering Eren _himself_ , and it was a gesture that Eren had neither expected nor deserved.

And so he lets the liar in him insist that there is nothing to talk about.

(Eren wonders when Levi will stop reaching out, wonders further if that’s what he _wants_ ; Levi to stop meeting him in the varying distances between them and letting Eren’s own gravitational pull tear him apart. Maybe that would be for the best. It stands to reason, since the galaxy has enough evil in it without Eren traipsing around star systems like he knows what he’s doing.

He’s never understood the universe. At the rate he’s going, maybe he never will. He didn’t even understand the _Jedi._ What could he know about _anything_?)

The liar grows stronger the longer Eren makes Levi wait. _After all_ , the liar insists, whispering in his ear on a breath more like a sigh, _what could there be to talk about, when nothing’s happening?_ The rest of Eren figures that he must concede the point. Nothing _is_ happening.

Every morning begins like this: Eren shuffles his way into the CSF Headquarters, sleeplessness making his limbs lag behind the demands of his brain until he has coffee, which is a luxury that the Temple doesn’t have. If anything, mornings are merely an exercise in the things that the Temple doesn’t have. And when he arrives, he often just ends up saddled with sifting through data for cases (drug dealing, slave trading, weapon smuggling) , allowing him to separate the passionless data from the slime that tries to push past his teeth whenever he thinks of _home_. Of the Temple. Of Levi.

(It’s the mornings that are the hardest, he’s come to find. Eren will find himself reaching for Levi, exhaustion making this habit easy to fall back into. Levi is always there, at the corner of his mind, and Eren thinks he could find him even in death.

It could be gravity that pulls him there, around the brightness that Levi has always been.

But it doesn’t matter what it is. When Eren catches himself, he stops, retreats, and holds himself closer. After the morning passes, after his body wakes up and remembers that it’s tainted, he doesn’t make that mistake again.

Until the next morning, when his body forgets as if it had never remembered.)

The liar is so adept at its job that Eren begins to believe that there really is nothing to say. If anything, the weeks Levi has been waiting for Eren to talk about _anything_ important have just been building up to today—a perfectly mundane occurrence of choking on cafeteria food with coworkers. This life feels so _normal_ , so average, so unlike anything Eren has ever lived that it’s difficult trying to separate the person of now from the monster he knows he is. Further still, it’s harder than ever to spot the Jedi he was trying to be.

(The Jedi he’ll never be.)

But for now, _right_ now, all that’s happening is his lungs are trying to save his life.

He’d swallowed nerf sausage funny, probably, in retrospect, because he hadn’t been chewing. It’s something he’s been trying to work on since he was young and prone to eating whatever was placed in front of him, regardless of its suspicious nature. As with most things Eren has attempted to undertake, he supposes it’s ended in failure. He’s not surprised.

“ _Breathe_ ,” Petra’s slap on his back is hard and stinging, but does dislodge more of the food jammed in his windpipe. “Do they skip chewing lessons at the Temple?”

Eren’s next breaths are wheezes, but they do the job. “Oh yeah.” The next two inhales breed laughter that hurts. “Chewing is _way_ too aggressive for the Jedi.”

The laughter that follows _feels_ more uncomfortable than it sounds, clawing at the edges of his face and making his tongue itch. The Force has never been gentle with him, reaching into his stomach to turn it over, sloshing the contents back and forth until he thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Besides,” he continues, if only because he can feel the lies of the laughter digging into his face, “we don’t really have food that you chew at the Temple.”

The fingers of the Force drop away from his face, suddenly, and each of his coworkers lean forward, Petra turning her chair to make it easier for her to do so. And suddenly, Eren is the center of attention all over again, his skin prickling at the sensation.

( _at least it’s not the Senate_. Which isn’t _wrong_. But it doesn’t make it any easier to bear.)

“So, what, water and the Force sustain you?” Auroro is getting easier to ignore in the Force, his disgust only a sigh in the sea of sound that haunts him. Eren’s getting better at keeping to himself, most days. “Do Jedi not eat?”

Eren shrugs. “We eat a lot of broth and bread. It’s a _Temple_. We’re... monks?” He’s never had to explain being a Jedi before. It’s something people just _know_ , and no one has ever asked something so specific as what they eat. He supposes it had never occurred to them. If he’s honest, it hadn’t occurred to Eren as a child either. “So we’re very... austere.”

This bout of laughter is more genuine and feels more like a victory than anything has in months.

“So what’s it like?” Petra’s elbow rests on the table and Eren suddenly feels like he’s giving Jedi younglings a lecture. It’s a position he’s never wanted and he _definitely_ doesn’t want it now. “Being a Jedi.”

Another question he’s never gotten. He’s only ever been talked at, _told_ what he does by people who think that they know. And he doesn’t know how to answer. If Levi were here, he would know.

But he’s not.

(And it’s Eren’s fault, of course. Everything, as it currently stands, is.)

“Uh. Well. We... we train? And... meditate? During the day. We keep our lightsaber skills honed by dueling each other. There’s no more effective practice than, like, sparring with someone who can out-duel you. Or... someone you know really well. If you can’t get past each other, you need more work. Or you’re partners. Or...” Eren can _feel_ his mind wander, can feel himself reach out without asking the rest of him.

He’s been _trying_ not to do this.

(But it’s hard to change a way of life.)

His presence in the Force is pulled back to him so hard he feels it slap against his bones, even as his mind plays through every duel he and Levi had ever had, before catching in an endless loop the fight on Omwat. His feet come out from under him, he hits the ground, and there’s a lightsaber burning at his throat. Just a couple more inches...

( _“come back.”_ )

“Master Levi said it’s a wonder I’ve gotten as tall as I have.” Eren’s mouth moves as his brain does its best to catch up, pulling out of the past and tumbling back into the present. At least it keeps the others from noticing his detour. “Since Jedi meals aren’t particularly protein heavy outside of legumes and whatever and since a lot of the formative stuff is done in meditation or lessons.”

The feeling pulling at Eren’s mouth has nothing to do with the Force. At least, not really. The smile on his mouth is something else entirely, even though it’s small.

“I think his exact words were, uh. Were, uh, ‘if you get any taller I’m going to have to bring you down to size. I leave fucking Wookiees to the Grandmaster.’” Gunther _howls_ while Petra splutters, Auroro trying to find a medium between the two.

There are failings in letting the mouth move before the brain does. But that’s what Levi has always been around to fix.

“Not that the Grandmaster fucks Wookiees!” Gunther gets no quieter and the cafeteria becomes heavy with curiosity. “It’s a joke—about the Grandmaster and a Senator? Senator Zacharias. He’s _huge_ , you know? And it does seem like he can’t see, what with all the hair...”

And, of course, there have always been reasons why Eren had been sent on so few diplomatic missions in his tenure as a Jedi.

“ _Fuck!_ ” He swears to cover up the endless laughter as Gunther’s face hits the table while Petra’s burns red. “Not that I’m saying the Grandmaster and Senator Zacharias have fucked! That’s not what I’m saying, I was just— _shitting,_ Force-fucking, _son of a bitch_.”

There are tears in Gunther’s eyes. Eren feels like he can relate to that, if for entirely different reasons.

He hopes they don’t notice that Eren had implied something further still—that he and Levi were more than just a stupid padawan and respected Master. Or they could’ve been. Or they might’ve been. Or that in some other universe it could’ve been one of the endless potential futures.

To make sure, he simply moves on, before they can put it together. He doesn’t trust the police enough to let them think what they want.

“ _Anyway_ ,” he shields his eyes with his hand, wrinkling his nose and trying to tune out their laughter, “you eat, you meditate, and when you’re old enough, you train with lightsabers and, uh, get sent on missions with your Master. To do things. For the benefit of the Republic and the Order.” He can feel the words thickening in his mouth like curdled milk and it makes him want to vomit.

When Petra sighs, it’s still tinted with afterimage of her laughter, but the Force is smoothing out around her. “How old do you have to be before you master the art of meditating?”

Eren drops his hand away from his eyes and swallows, shrugging. “If you start young enough, you can fall into meditation really easy before you ever end up someone’s padawan. But the older you start, the longer it takes.” His toes curl against the soles of his boots and he bites his tongue on any elaboration. It wouldn’t be polite to mention that some Jedi never manage to learn. It would only bring attention to the fact that Eren never has. It’s entirely possible that he'll never figure that out either.

It’s not a particularly short list, anymore.

The Force breathes against his face in a way that gives birth to ice in his lungs, and the three members of the Underworld police feel... different. They feel like officers of the law. And Eren doesn’t need to pry into the past to know that this is what an interrogation feels like.

“So is it true?”

A static starts whispering in Eren’s ears and he doesn’t know who asked the question. He isn’t staring at any mouth in particular to know who it could’ve been. Perhaps if he wanted to taste the question and figure out who, he’d just have to breathe in and sigh out the Force. But he doesn’t, because there’s a whole lot of _nothing_ happening inside his head.

(That’s not entirely true. It’s too much of something, maybe. Too much noise.)

“Is what true?” Eren speaks from far away, because his center isn’t inside his body. It’s somewhere else.

“That infants are taken into the Order?”

There is a balancing act going on inside Eren’s body.

“You mean do Jedi take children. You’re asking if what I said to the Senate’s true.”

(The Jedi tried to make a liar out of him.

Maybe it doesn’t matter if he truly is or not. All that matters is that people think he is.)

He thinks it’s Petra speaking, feels it tickling at the back of his throat. “Yes.”

(“ _I heard on Mandalore,_ ” Eren from the past says to Levi, tucked away in a corner of a corridor in the Temple, “ _that the Jedi are called cradle robbers by others in the galaxy._ ” He’d paused and had hoped that the galaxy was just home to more liars than Eren could count.

He hadn’t expected the Jedi to be home to them.

“ _Do the Jedi take children?_ ” It had seemed a fitting way to finish his question.

The expression on Levi’s face had given it away before he’d ever started speaking.)

“Yeah.” Eren reaches to pull himself back inside the cage made of his bones. “I asked when I found out. The whole—the whole _reason_ is because, uh. Because if you take in children who are older, the Order worries about, like... about control. The younger a child is when they start training, the easier it is for them to control themselves and impulses. Allegedly.” He clears his throat and his ears open up, the fog lifting from behind his eyes. “The Order tries to avoid making Jedi like me.”

What had been gossiping at the office water cooler was turning into something far more serious. And it made him want to run.

He can feel Auroro start to speak before he does, and Eren drops his own words on the table instead. “But the problem is, is that Jedi like me don’t happen because we’re too old. Levi was older than me when he joined the Order and he’s the _best_. Mikasa and Armin and... they’re both really good at what they do. It’s not about age. It’s about character.”

“And you just don’t have the character for it.” When Aururo says that, it isn’t a _lie_. And so Eren allows it’s seeding in the garden of truths that other people lay out for him.

“No,” he admits. “I don’t.”

When he swallows, all the choking over and done with, the food no longer killing him, Eren doesn’t feel so normal, anymore.

-

Levi watches Eren move and knows that there are few things in the universe quite as beautiful. In fact, it might be the case that there is _nothing_ in the universe that parallels the grace contained in Eren Jaeger when he allows the Force to move through him, like water carving its way through stone.

The way he feels in the Force is no less incredible.

Each strike creates a vibration in the antechamber, spreads outward in ripples that caress Levi’s face with callousless fingers. It rekindles a craving beneath his ribs, scorching the underside of his sternum and making it difficult to breathe.

(Levi wonders if he was even meant to see this.)

He had known the instant that Eren had returned to the Temple, as he had the past days and weeks that Eren had been loaned to the Underworld Police. And he had waited, like he had the past days and weeks that he’d asked Eren to talk to him, row after row of knitted nerf wool the only indicator that time was passing while Eren wasn’t giving him any information to close the space between them. And then, Levi supposes, he’d gotten rather sick of the itch of waiting—which had made him almost _certain_ that Eren had gotten his impatient streak from him. He had to have.

Or maybe Levi had gotten it from Eren. It’s impossible to test that now, as close as they are.

(As close as they were.)

Eren was to be found in the small arena inside the Temple, made for lightsaber exercises of any kind; between younglings and padawans, Knights and Masters. And today it had been the home of Jean Kirschtein and the swirling mass at the center of Levi’s galaxy. That is to say—Eren was to be found dueling Jean and there had been a smile teasing at the corner of his mouth.

And now the smile is wide, if not bright, and Levi’s chest tightens as he watches.

He decides it then, as he’s affirmed countless times in his life now, that Eren truly is beautiful.

Eren slides between Jean’s legs in the moment that Levi’s distracted by his immensity, and, cutting off his own lightsaber, he takes Jean’s wrist and twists his arm, positioning his own lightsaber at his throat in a clear win. The expediency of the match marks them both as skilled Jedi, if not compatible partners in combat.

Armin, from his place among staring padawans, smiles with glittering eyes.

“Match set! Win goes to Jedi Jaeger!”

Eren lets Jean go as he thumbs off his lightsaber, complaining loudly about the soreness already starting in his shoulder as Eren himself jogs the circumference of the circle created by the spectators, arms raised in his victory. His hands only drop to tap against the smaller hands of the children too young to be padawans, but still eager to share in his win.

“Victory to Eren Jaeger!” Levi savours listening to Eren shout. It’s the loudest he’s been, with his voice and in the Force, since their altercation on Omwat. “The crowd goes wild! _Haaaa!_ ” He hisses from the back of his throat. “ _Haaa!_ ”

Laughter transfers from person to person as Eren slows down, and for a moment Levi can feel the air in the antechamber about to break up, splitting them back into their own trainings and meditations, practices and studies. It would mean the end of this little impromptu session of older Jedi working on their technique.

It would mean Eren steps back out of reach.

And so Levi steps in before that can happen.

(He’s not strong to let Eren go again. Not today. Not right now.)

“Think you could go another round, Eren?”

The air thickens, the focus shifting from the recently-finished spar to the one in the potential future. A Master and his trained Knight? It would be a _thrill_.

Much as Eren’s eyes on him are thrilling now. Have been for—for _years_ now. But right now, they send shivers down his spine, rattling his bones together like an instrument. The craving inside his heart grows stronger. Maybe it’s just gotten more _obvious_. Perhaps it has been there as long as Levi has known that Eren’s eyes were the colour stars should be.

“I just _won_ , Master.” Eren’s tone is all deference, but Levi can feel him pulling away even as he speaks. “I don’t think losing would make me look very good.” A sea of undignified whines rise from the youngest members of the audience, eager to witness the whatever-this-is that Levi wants so desperately.

(He will reach for this with both hands. He will not let go.

He _needs_ this.)

“It’s been a while.” Levi searches Eren’s face, skates over his cheekbones and admires his eyebrows, notices sweat clinging to his hair, but only at his temples. There’s still energy left in him, and they both know it. There’s _always_ energy in him. “I’ve probably gotten rusty.”

“Not long enough,” Levi sees more than hears Eren say that, wants to tell him that Omwat doesn’t count. Can’t find the words. It makes Levi wonder if he only had two words in his lifetime with Eren that could tell him what he wanted to know. And, if that’s true, it makes him wish he hadn’t wasted them. “You sure you wanna embarrass me today, Master?”

“Absolutely.”

It’s encouraging, the fact that Eren steps forward, even if it is with a sigh. He unclips his lightsaber from his belt, rotating it in his hand to limber up his wrist. Levi mimes him, but with both his own.

“Two on one,” Eren sighs, again, this time theatrically. “Is that even _fair_?”

The deadpan that rises up in Levi’s body is so familiar that it makes him want to cry. “Maybe I need the extra boost. Have to compensate for my height, you know?”

Eren’s laughter bursts out of him, his body falling into a stance that Levi knows by heart. The Force _rings_ with it, the sound gracing his ears like the singing of the Cathedral of the Winds, his heart threatening to pry open his ribs to get closer to the sensation.

Levi eases into a stance of his own, both of them facing each other with their lightsabers drawn, but not activated. It’s a position they’ve been in countless times and the creature inside his chest starts a riot, liquid joy rushing through his bloodstream.

It slows down time for him.

But the unified _snap-hiss_ of three lightsabers sets everything in motion.

Levi moves on the balls of his feet in practiced steps where Eren pushes himself forward to cover as much distance as he can at one time. It’s a rushing technique that often takes enemies by surprise, a far more aggressive move than those who often deal with Jedi are used to seeing. It made Eren a useful combatant to have by his side (at his back). But it was only the surface of a choreography that opened into a _dance_.

Levi catches Eren’s lightsaber twice, once on the one in his right hand, once again on the saber in his left, before Eren swirls to the side, robes moving about him like a cloud. He looks like he feels, a storm system that rolls in the atmosphere of a planet, rotating as if in play. As Levi meets him, stroke for stroke, he catches the glint of Eren’s teeth in a smile.

And time slows down again.

Levi springs backward, watching Eren watch him as the soles of his boots press against the wall, using the surface to thrust himself forward into a spin, one lightsaber held aloft from his body, the other used as a point at the head of the drill Levi had made of himself. It’s a combat move that he wouldn’t be able to use on anyone else. No one else’s reflexes would be fast enough, there is no one else he’d trust enough to deflect, there’s—

There’s no one else as in tune with Levi’s presence in the Force as Eren is.

The evidence is all in Eren’s response.

He doesn’t roll to the side, nor does he intend to catch the unbridled force of Levi’s retaliation head on. He bends—something that had taken Eren years of practice to do, something he hasn’t been able to replicate in combat with anyone else—his knees brushing the floor as his saber comes up to catch behind the one rotating with Levi’s body inside the spin. Levi can feel the breath of heat from Eren’s lightsaber against his hand as Eren disarms him, catching Levi’s saber in his free hand and rising from the floor the moment Levi’s boots brushed over his head.

When Levi rises from his own roll and twists toward him, Eren is holding both lightsabers in a mirror of Levi’s opening stance. For a moment, he can’t even tell which of the two in Eren’s hands is rightfully his. Eren holds both as if he had made them.

And _shit_ does Levi love him.

(The feeling trembles inside his body, breathes Eren in deep and holds tightly. And then it reaches out.)

They both move forward in tandem, even as they reach for each other in the Force and _collide,_ and when their lightsabers come together this time, the world between them ripples. This is where the two of them _belong_ , back in the spaces they have created for each other in the universe. Where one is, the other is welcome. It’s an ease of access that is unparalleled and breathtaking. It shimmers between them like the diamond-dust of the stars.

( _Diamond-dust._ It’s not a phrase Levi has ever used before, he thinks. He wonders where he got it from.)

“So,” Levi speaks as they come together in strike after strike. The only evidence of his exertion is the sweat that glues his hair to his forehead. “I got a call from Mike about an allegation that Erwin fucks Wookiees? Nile said something about it.”

Eren laughs again, as if this one, too, had been just as surprising as the first. “There are _kids_ here, Levi.”

“They’re watching, not listening. I’ve trained kids before, _padawan_. I know how this shit works.” Eren flips over his head, swatting at Levi with one lightsaber and pushing him across the floor with the Force, making his boots squeal. Neither of them grimace. “Where do you think Nile got the impression Erwin’s a kinky piece of shit?”

The smile on Eren’s face is an echo of a former incarnation and Levi’s heart makes a home in his throat, suffocating him in the best kind of way. “Haven’t a clue.”

The next strike brings them close enough to smell the sweat on each other’s faces. It wouldn’t be any sort of difficult to lean in for a kiss that tastes like effort and adrenaline and each other. The creature squirms, crawling up his throat to slide past his heart.

“Sounds like someone’s been gossiping at the water cooler,” Levi breathes.

Eren’s pupils blow wide and Levi can only imagine how his own must look as they step away from each other. Gravity tugs at his lungs, the distance making it impossible to reconsider kissing him.

 _I wasn’t like this before Mandalore,_ Levi tells himself and wonders if that’s even true. Maybe Mandalore had just nudged him over the edge from _desire_ into _craving_. He’d been shoving things down inside the Jedi he was made to be for much longer than he’d care to say aloud.

They circle around each other with quick and careful steps before they are brought together again by the call of the spar they’re doing and the pull that’s been between them as long as Eren has been a Knight. Eren catches Levi’s strike between the cross of his lightsabers, and the Force shimmers between them again. But this time it’s with something different.

The Force slams into him with a memory.

Levi has his legs stolen out from beneath himself, the chill of Omwat surrounding him, the vehemence of his own emotions leaving the taste of dirt in his mouth. When he looks up, he sees—himself. There is a lightsaber at his throat, the grass soft even through the bruises rising on his back and the texture of his robes.

He sees what Eren had seen and it’s shaking him to his core.

“ _Come back_ ,” Levi says from the past, speaking down to the Levi-within-Eren now. He can feel the burn of the saber before it cuts off and emotions that are thick and heavy bubble up inside him like tar. “ _Come back. I came out here to take you home, so come back with me._ ”

Eren’s eyes sting with tears or the dark or the poison-gold inside his irises.

When Levi blinks again they’re back in the Temple and Eren’s lightsabers are cut off, his eyes wide as he sucks in deep breaths.

“I tap out,” Eren speaks with a voice that’s as small as it had been in the Council chamber after his trial in the Senate. The sigh of mist against vegetation on the forest floor. “Victory to Master Levi.” Levi feels the toss of his lightsaber before Eren actually stars the gesture, and the pommel slaps into his palm without a thought to the effort.

Armin doesn’t even have time to call the match on his own before Eren pushes through the slightly larger crowd (Levi hadn’t even _noticed_ , not wrapped up in Eren like he had been) and leaves the antechamber altogether.

Levi goes after him, the noise disappearing behind him, unimportant and irrelevant for the _now_ that’s screaming at him.

Eren’s robes don’t still when he does, the inertia causing them to flutter around his ankles as he turns to meet Levi’s eyes. It makes him wonder if he’d spoken aloud, but the dryness in his mouth is evidence that he hadn’t. He hates it when his voice rasps.

“Sorry,” Eren speaks first, something entirely new since they’d fought. Since the trial. Since... everything. “Sorry that you had to see that.”

Levi takes his time before speaking. Maybe he can find more magic words that will help bring them one step closer. Magic words that will make it easier to say other ones, deeper ones, stronger ones. In the interim between Eren’s apology and Levi’s own half of the conversation, he takes Eren’s fingers in his own. He doesn’t lace them, on the chance that the gesture will make Eren bolt. But he does hold them, and for once Eren doesn’t pull away.

“I’ll be here,” Levi says, finally. “When you’re ready, I’ll be here. When you want to tell me about the other kids at school,” a smile flirts with Eren’s mouth and Levi’s eyes drop to glance at it before lifting back to his eyes, “and other shit, I’ll be here.”

( _I’ll always be here_ Levi could add. But he doesn’t. He just wraps around Eren instead and absorbs the radiation that Eren’s never quite been able to keep in him.)

“Have you ever thought that maybe you’d be better off letting me ruin someone else’s life for a while, Levi?” There is something to be said for when Eren uses his name and not his title. It sharpens his focus and always brings him back to the present from wherever his mind thinks it might wander, before it even decides on a destination. “For reference.”

“Wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t meddling in your business, would I?”

At first, the pause that stretches between them feels like every other one they’ve been sharing lately, brittle and soon to lead to the end of their moment. But then the Force shifts and Eren glances across Levi’s face before dropping his eyes to glance to the side. They catch the light like gemstones as they focus on the marble floor, but they stay a firm and steady green, even as the light tries to play with them.

“Okay,” Eren squeezes his fingers gently and he opens in the Force like a flower opening to the sun. Levi swallows so as not to cry.

“Okay.” Levi squeezes back.

Perhaps Eren really does believe that there’s nothing for him to say. Perhaps there is a sense of burdening Levi with anything that comes out of his mouth. Perhaps he thinks that Omwat would be better forgotten, even if _he_ can’t seem to forget, himself.

( _“come back”_ )

But Levi can find it in him, somewhere, to be patient.

After all, as with most things in the universe that they have made for themselves, something has to give. Eventually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi should’ve said something sooner. But all he has is the now, and he’s about sick of waiting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in the interest of honesty, there's no such thing as pulupa fruit. i made it up. i was looking in all my reference books for mixed drinks and they only had straight up alcohol listed so i made up a fake fruit. just so you know. 
> 
> @disney hire me

(Something always has to give.)

This bar, like all of the bars in the sublevels, is a parody of the environment in which it was born. The lighting is just this side of too dim, and there are more hidden booths than should be possible in a space that only has so many corners. The only windows are at the front of the building, wide but blaster-proof, smeared with filth despite probably-admirable attempts to clean them. But dirty or not, they catch the neon lights from the dark streets and cast it against the hardwood floor, warped by age, damp, and countless conflicts that probably no one knows the whole story to.

( _“Bars down there,”_ Levi had told him once, thoughtfully, “ _are a lot like cantinas on Tatooine._ ”)

“So do you feel anything?” Auroro’s voice is almost overwhelmed by static when he speaks into the comm, probably because he tends to spit when he talks. If Eren weren’t suitably distracted, he figures he might feel a dampness inside his ear canal. That disgusting sensation would have nothing to do with the Force and everything to do with the fact that his body tends to react sympathetically when shit makes his skin crawl. He’s sure that for some people it’s probably a blessing. He’s also sure that for him, it isn’t.

The pulupa fruit cocktail resting between his hands on the surface of the bar is part of the distraction—the rest of him paying more mind to the bar itself, rather than the officers waiting for him to tell them _something_. He’d never had _anything_ with pulupa fruit in it before, though he’d heard about it. The thick-skinned plant somehow managed to be naturally carbonated, due to the density of the atmosphere of the planet on which it was grown.

Or something like that. He remembers Armin talking about the plant’s nature and properties, remembers Levi talking about the drinks it could be used in, but never really thought he’d ever get to try it. It’s a luxury item. Even Levi’s information had been secondhand.

It’s sweeter than he thought it’d be. Almost entirely hides the burn of the Kuati bourbon that Eren had watched the bartender pour liberally into the glass.

(This is the most expensive beverage he’s ever had in his life. Might as well enjoy _something_ while the CSF is footing the bill for his services. Penance or not, he has to blend in. Surely it can only be beneficial to reinforce the high-horse image of a Jedi in the slums.)

“ _Jedi_ Jaeger, do you _feel_ anything?”

That version of the question _definitely_ had some spit in it.

“I _feel_ a lot of things,” Eren replies, hiding his response against the mouth of his glass, murmuring it into the noise of the cantina around him. Shadows and whispers caress him inside the Force, the slime of the patronage oozing into his mouth the more attention he pays to them. Yes—there’s a lot going on inside the Force, like there always is, especially on Coruscant. Especially in the slums. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Auroro splutters, indignant, and Eren counts it as a small victory for himself before diving back into the sensations around him, the flutter of life tickling his face as if he’d truly gone underwater and algae were grasping at him with slimy tendrils. His eyes drop back down when his glass does and he reaches out. He _knows_ the feeling he’s looking for, has danced around the suspicion-turned-panic of finding a Jedi in the undercity for a good portion of his life. So Auroro can’t be blamed for his impatience, not really. He can’t hear the hum of life around him—the only thing he can be blamed for is his shitty attitude. And Eren’s relatively certain he can ignore that. He’s been adapting just fine so far.

“Is there anything suspicious?” Petra clarifies, trying for as businesslike a tone as she can manage past the snickering hiding at the back of her throat. Auroro’s face must be priceless. “That you can feel.”

Eren speaks into his glass, glancing down the rows and rows of liquor bottles, most of which he’d never heard of. “Everything feels suspicious down here and everyone’s on edge when a Jedi is around. No one’s _bolted_ yet. Or threatened me. So I can’t say for sure that we’re even in the right place.”

Three different sighs breathe into the earpiece Eren has tucked away. It’s at least a _little_ bit admirable that they can still find it in themselves to be disappointed when stakeouts to apprehend criminals don’t pan out—after all, this thing happens a _lot_ in the CSF. There’s a lot that can go wrong with a population this size. From Eren’s experience, the CSF is used to failure.

(It says a lot about the tact he’s learned that he doesn’t say that out loud.)

Illicit dealings happen around him as Eren sips at his drink and swims in the white noise of Coruscant. The bubbles tickle the inside of his mouth while the whispers of hidden secrets hiss against the inside of his head. Within that—all that interference and slithering and rolling static—there’s the soft, chilled sigh at the back of his brain. The illusion of fingers stoke up the column of his spine in a gentle motion and Eren recoils into himself even as a part of him reaches back, goosebumps rising on his skin.

It’s in this split second—the moment that Levi finds him in the Force and Eren reaches back—someone stands abruptly from a corner table, the shadows falling off of them like a cloak. It gives Eren an excuse— _any_ excuse—to pull away and grab for the buzzing in his head that crawls toward his teeth. The rising panic from the humanoid-shape leaves a powdered taste in his mouth that makes his throat itch. Levi doesn’t disappear from his awareness, he never does, but the brightness flickers when the person breezes past him, toward the restrooms at the back of the bar.

Eren doesn’t move until he feels them push out the back door, leaving the most expensive drink of his life on the scarred surface of the bar and making his way slowly toward the hallway down which the potential suspect disappeared, leaving droplets of nervousness behind them.

“Suspect identified,” Eren speaks softly, picking up his pace when he’s out of sight of the other patrons, pushing out the back door and turning down the alley, following the vibrations of their panic. “Pursuing.”

Auroro speaks the same time Petra does.

“Jedi Jaeger, do _not_ get any closer.“

“Eren, keep visuals but don’t engage.”

He hears neither of them.

The suspect creates a wake around themselves as they push past pedestrians who ask no questions and keep their eyes down. It makes them easy to follow at a brisk, if unassuming, pace. Within the Force he teases their ankles, reaching for their boots to make them stumble, and when they take a corner sharper than they mean to, they have to catch themselves on a wall with one hand before they slide to the filthy ground. It slows them only a little, and when they slip from Eren’s field of view, he can feel them start to sprint.

As Eren catches up and spies the slimy handprint, he can tell that they’re human.

As he turns the corner, following after them, he breaks into a run.

Puddles splash around his boots, brown and muddied runoff from the upper levels, the heavenly water tainted by the distance between the ferrocrete and the clouds. The damp makes it easy to slide around another corner and onto another thoroughfare, following the suspect, his heart already catching up with them, as fast as it’s thrumming against the inside of his chest. Pedestrians step around him like a stream around as stone as he creates a bubble around himself in the Force, a trick that the pursuant doesn’t have in their arsenal. But it doesn’t make the chase _easy_ , by any means.

It just makes it more direct.

(It starts a song inside his soul—something familiar and beautiful and it brings to mind the white light at the center of the universe, brings to mind _Levi_. The two of them, running from members of the Bothan military. The two of them, slipping out of a bar on Tatooine in the middle of the night because a discussion had gotten a little too heated. The two of them, feigning surrender on Nal Hutta, if only to get insight into the strongest Hutt syndicate at the time.

The two of them against the world. Against the galaxy. Against the _universe_.

And _fuck_ does he miss that more than anything.)

The adrenaline sweeping through his system almost drowns out the shouts for clarification inside his earpiece, at the very least making them _very_ easy to ignore as he uses the Force to spring over a fragile-looking barricade—which had appeared to be garbage at first glance—that the suspect had wormed through, halfway down another alley, this one thinner than the others, not a connection between two main streets.

He lands with a splash, his lightsaber pulled into his hand as he skids to a stop, coming alive with energy and casting the walls around them with a steady blue glow. The suspect has come to a stop of their own, holding a blaster in one hand, silhouetting themselves against the other mouth of the alleyway protected by another barricade, also looking like a pile of trash that someone had attempted to hide from the view of the street. The blue light makes their cheekbones look cut from stone and their eyes glitter. The lighting makes it almost impossible to tell much of anything else about their features, though it does bring into stark relief a blast door built into the wall beside them, smooth and wide enough to fit a cargo speeder.

The Force betrays what their face does not—Eren can taste their terror on his tongue.

Auroro, Petra, and Gunther are all trying to speak at once in his ear as the two of them watch each other, and it’s pulling Eren in too many directions for him to be able to handle this the way a Jedi should. And so, to give himself the space to work, he pulls the earpiece out and drops it into the pocket of his tunic, shifting position only slightly to bring his lightsaber in a defensive block. The nose of a blaster can move from the ground toward his head with a twitch of the wrist and a twist of the torso.

“You’re under arrest,” Eren speaks effortlessly, the adrenaline keeping his breathlessness out of his voice, “under suspicion of criminal conspiracy to sell military equipment to organized crime groups.” He swallows against the dryness in his throat. “Are you going to come quietly?”

The blaster does not rise in a quick motion. Rather, it takes its time, aiming carefully as they hold it.

“I didn’t know the CSF had a pet Jedi,” the suspect speaks low, a smile touching their thin lips even though they tremble nervously. “You learn more about the world every day. Do you loan out your services to _anyone_?” Their voice doesn’t shake when Eren takes slow steps forward and neither does their hand. It’s commendable. “Think we could hire you?”

It strikes a nerve that Eren didn’t know he had.

“Not for sale,” he replies, shifting his weight to his toes and gliding forward, attempting to cut the blaster in half before they had a chance to fire it. But they pull the trigger before his lightsaber gets there, and it almost stops him where he stands.

The shot—not a blast of focused energy, but a solid piece of ammunition typical of a _slugthrower_ —goes just a little too wide, nicking his shoulder only barely, but it’s enough to shock him into stillness, giving the suspect the time to step back and adjust their aim. Their fear is now a sour weight in his mouth, like curdled bantha butter, and the ringing in his ears from the weapon’s discharge curls his tongue.

But he only pauses for a second.

Another shot comes for his head and he dances to the side, his spine parallel with the wall, and he brings his saber down against the ferrocrete, hissing against the standing water and blurring the suspect with a thin curtain of steam. Another pirouette to the side and another missed shot and Eren is almost close enough for another strike, and he’s sure _this_ one will take out the slugthrower, scaring the suspect _just_ enough for a surrender, and they’ll get to keep their hand—

“ _Freeze_!” Petra’s voice has the desired effect, his muscles locking in place, the suspect mimicking him to the point where the slugthrower slips from their grip and clatters to the pavement. The officers splash behind them, and Eren lowers his lightsaber, turning to meet them with the beginnings of a grin touching the corners of his mouth—

And he finds two of the three blasters pointed at him.

(He should’ve felt it in the Force—the two pinpricks of intent aimed at his chest, just like the Senate chamber all over again.)

Petra steps past him, her blaster dropping from Eren’s chest to hold position on the suspect while Auroro folds their arms behind their backs, already shouting orders to get some explosive tape after the suspect is cuffed to blow the blast door.

The humming of Eren’s lightsaber feels too loud, even though the city around them and above them has always been nothing but noise. It usually drowns out almost everything else.

(His lightsaber is a curse. His lightsaber, his robes. _He’s_ cursed.

He’ll never be anything other than the Jedi-Who-Isn’t, the Jedi-Who-Failed.

The Jedi-Who-Couldn’t.)

Maybe there isn’t any saving that. Maybe the only way to free the Jedi of him is to _quit_. Like he’d wanted to. Like he’d said from the beginning. Like he’d said to the Senate and to the Grandmaster and to Levi.

(He thinks of the kiss he’d shared with Levi on Mandalore, thinks of Levi’s face on Omwat as Eren tried to hurt him enough to make him leave, thinks of how incredible and terrifying and _disdainful_ it is to be as in love with him as he is.

He has to free Levi. Like he should've done on Omwat. Like he should've done before all of this, before Mandalore.

And there’s only one way that he knows how.)

Maybe it’s time to quit.

He lets go of the thumb-plate, the blade cutting out a significant light source in the alley around them, and his throat feels the driest it had since he’d followed the suspect—now on their knees with Auroro standing beside them—onto the slum’s streets. His own hand starts to shake—and it’s he who’s mirroring the suspect. Nerves make a person weak, after all.

“So which part is it that you’re afraid of?” Eren asks Gunther, his voice tight. “The weapon or the lightsaber?” He tosses the lightsaber up like a toy, watching Gunther twitch in response. With his next motion, he twists his body, leaving his front to Gunther and hurling his lightsaber out of the alley down the way he’d come, into the darkness punctuated by humming neon lights. He watches Gunther follow the lightsaber with his head and then with his body, watches Petra look away from where she’s setting up the tape, hears Auroro’s sharp inhale—

And Eren turns around and leaves.

A moment’s distraction, after all, is all it takes to lose someone in the undercity. And— _after all_ —he was born here. He knows how to disappear between one blink and the next, knows how to blend in with the mildew on the walls, with the river of people two alleys down.

(He knew this was coming. He fucking _knew_. He’d been fine, and they’d almost been friends, and he’d almost allowed himself to forget what he had done—forget who he was, what he was, why he was here.

He should’ve prepared better.

Something _always_ has to give.)

-

(None of this shit is sitting right with him.

It hasn’t been sitting well since Eren had come home two days before, talking about reconnaissance on a potential drug ring, though the CSF hadn’t told him what they were allegedly selling. He’d spoken like it didn’t scare the piss out of him that he’d be going back to the undercity, a place he hadn’t been since Levi had met him years ago.

Levi knows it haunts him, just like Tatooine haunts his own history.)

The city undulates outside the transparisteel window of the Council chamber, and it’s just Levi and Hanji here. Hanji is draped over their Council seat, the glittering of the city-planet’s lights obscuring their eyes through their thin-rimmed goggles. Levi sees their reflection watching him as he leans against the window, contemplating the height of the Council chamber, the distance between here and the bottom of the sublevels.

It seems incalculable.

“None of this shit is sitting right with me,” Levi says, out loud, because it helps him to think that way, sometimes. It’s not necessarily encouraged in the Jedi—but it’s just the two of them, and Hanji is nothing if not... eccentric, when it comes to Jedi principles. Thinking out loud won’t be the biggest sin he’s committed in his life and it certainly won’t be the last of them. And so he continues. “I don’t like it.”

Hanji’s smile almost swallows the air speeders minding their own business, making their own journeys. The spacescrapers catch the light of the slowly rotating orbital mirrors, creating a planetwide sunset that sets every window this high up on fire.

“Eren’s a big boy, Levi,” they tell him, swinging their legs a little as they speak. “A grown-up Jedi doing community service.” The silence they leave is intentional, giving Levi time to consider saying anything before they continue with their thought, for once. “Or is it the undercity that has you worried, not just the sort of general concern you have literally _all_ the time?”

Levi almost turns to frown at them, settling instead for frowning at the transparisteel and hoping they catch his reflection.

“I don’t worry _all_ the time,” Levi lies with a straight face, even as he reaches out for Eren in the Force, finding him in the sublevels in a bar, waiting for a shoe to drop in the criminal underworld. “And I just don’t like _this_. All of this. I don’t like how we basically sold Eren to the Security Force under the guise of a Jedi consultant when they have him doing something that doesn’t seem like _consulting_ to me.” He takes a breath before he continues, ensuring that his voice stays even. “Jedi aren’t something you can just _loan out_. This isn’t a defensive _assignment_. This is purely offensive _mandate_. Isn’t this something that we _don’t_ want him doing? I thought that was the whole point of this exercise.”

Hanji hums noncommittally, letting Levi think. It’s not a contrast to how they usually are, not exactly. Just because they’re always talking doesn’t mean they’re not _listening_. But this is at least a little different from how their conversations usually go.

(“ _Thinking about Eren again?”_ They ask, because they never dance around the important questions.

Levi will always look at them, will always say no, and will always be lying.

He’s sure they know. He thinks he appreciates that they do.)

“I don’t like it,” Levi repeats, this time softly. “I don’t _like_ it. He’s not an item. We’re not _mercenaries_.”

Another hum, this one a little sharper, and they tilt their head down to reveal the colour of their eyes to meet his glance in the window. He wonders if this is how they treat the younger Jedi who seek information in the Archives—always asking probing questions and making noises that beg the question of what, exactly, the students are looking for before giving them any of the information that they want.

(It’s just that this is the shit that _smarts_ —they’re _not_ mercenaries. Levi left that life on purpose. He didn’t want to be tossed back into a life where his assignments were chosen without his consultation and that’s exactly what Erwin has done here.)

This pause is longer before Hanji speaks again, and the question they ask pries into him more and less than the others.

“How’s he feel, then?” There’s a smile touching their lips in their reflection. “To you.”

Eren’s always there at the back of Levi’s head, something that happened without Levi noticing at some point in their time together—and Hanji knows this about him, too. Eren’s still in the bar, still sitting and waiting, and a large part of him hopes that nothing happens tonight. The CSF intelligence was wrong, maybe, and he’ll be home without having had to do anything at all.

And when he gets back today— _today_ , not tomorrow, not a week from now, but _this day_ —the two of them will get to have a talk. It’s been a long time coming—since before the trial, before Omwat. This is something that’s been coming since _Mandalore_ , and he wishes he’d said something sooner. He wishes he’d said something _then_.

But he supposes now is as good a time as he’s going to get.

“He’s just waiting,” is what Levi says out loud, stroking up Eren’s spine absently, a habit that’s just as familiar and unknown as when Eren became a part of him. And, just as habit dictates, Eren reaches back for him, winding around Levi in the way he always does, and it fills him with longing from the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet. “Just waiting for something to happen.”

(A part of Levi whispers _like we’ve been doing for way too long_.)

Levi swallows around the overwhelming feeling rising at the back of his throat and then it settles in his chest.

And he knows without thinking that this is love.

Acknowledging it is at once liberating and restricting, wrapping around his lungs with such intensity that it feels difficult to breathe.

It’s surreal, labeling this properly for the first time. Labeling it outside the heat of any moment, outside the fire of a spar. Labeling it peacefully and softly inside the confines of his own body. It makes his heart feel full to bursting.

(He should’ve said it sooner.)

It changes everything and nothing.

(He should’ve said _something_.)

Something inside him comes unshackled. It demands to be discussed.

And Levi gives in. He gives in and he bends and he rolls beneath the feeling for a moment of consideration, because he _will_ talk about this. They’ll talk about it, like they should have, and he’ll say the things he should’ve said when Eren had brought their foreheads together, when Eren had kissed him properly, when Levi had wanted to do nothing more than pull him in for another so he could taste the winter on his lips—

He comes up for air when Eren bolts in the Force, his entire demeanour changing. It’s another familiar sensation to him—the feeling of Eren on the hunt, chasing after ideologies that he clings to with both hands, running after the Right Thing that he _knows_ he’s doing. It’s the Eren just before and just after his Trials.

(Levi loves him. Levi _loves_ him.)

“Levi?” Hanji pulls him further out of the Force, centering him back in the Council chamber, giving him the room he needs to breathe again. He wonders if they felt what had happened to him just now. “Is he all right?”

“Yeah. He should be back soon.” He turns away from the window, breathing in Eren now that his lungs can hold the feeling, and he faces them with a small frown. “So I’m going to need you beat it when he does.”

Hanji snickers, exhaling their laugh from behind their teeth. “Sure, _okay_. I can probably find someone else to talk to.”

“You always do.”

That makes them laugh as he starts to pace.

The pacing eventually combines with watching the shadows slowly stretch across the carpet of the raised dais on which reports are given. The darkened fingers reach themselves toward the wall with incremental progress, enveloping the room centimeter by centimeter until, almost abruptly, to nighttime. The city comes _alive_ at night, the lights shimmering as long as the darkness reigns.

And throughout this entire change in scenery, Eren doesn’t return.

(At some point—when the shadows were halfway over the dais but had not yet reached the outer curve—Eren had slipped into the sea of life on Coruscant. It had been odd, you know. He rarely ever truly blends in with the world around him, always a beacon in the galaxy that Levi can spot without effort.

There have only been a few times where Eren had fallen off his radar.

He doesn’t like to think about those.)

“Do you want to call the CSF?” Hanji’s question stops Levi in the middle of another pace, just as he’d been about to insist that Eren should’ve been back by then. There’s a revelation sitting on his tongue, begging to be freed from behind his teeth, and it’s eating at him, like everything does. “Before you walk a hole in the floor and fall into the meditation room. I don’t know if there’s a cushion to catch you.”

He almost snaps about their flippancy, but he holds the feeling inside his chest and lets it settle before bleeding out with the tension in his shoulders. In the moment he opens his mouth to comment on their suggestion—and he doesn’t know what he would’ve said—the door to the Council chamber breathes open with a sigh.

Officer Petra Ral takes two steps into the Council chamber, holding Eren’s lightsaber in one of her hands. The filth that covers it is reminiscent of Omwat, if murkier and looking more like slime. Levi almost has the mind to ask if maybe the thing was coated in oil, since Eren can’t manage to keep it in his hand where it belongs. But the rushing of sound inside his skull drowns out the words he should’ve been considering, a stream of distress hissing between his ears.

(He would know if Eren had died just then. He would’ve _known_. This can’t be what this is. He would’ve felt it as more than just a fading out. It would be catastrophic, it would be _worldshattering_. This is not that. It can’t be that, it—)

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Petra’s voice shakes, but not out of nervousness. It tastes more like shame when it washes over Levi’s shoulders in the Force. “I was told I could find you here.” Her fingers twitch around Eren’s lightsaber as if she wants to twist it between her hands but knows better than to do so. “We can’t find him.”

When Levi speaks, his tone is surprisingly level.

“What do you mean you can’t find him?”

Petra’s eyes fix on the floor for a moment before she raises them to meet Levi’s gaze.

“Eren—Jedi Jaeger. We were in the middle of—“ She pauses, reconsidering her words as if careful not to sugarcoat whatever she had to say. Her consideration almost overshadows the way her shame makes the air in the chamber feel. “He chased after the suspect we were searching for and we chased after him. In arriving at the scene where Jedi Jaeger was in the middle of apprehending the suspect, myself and the other officers may have... overreacted and treated Jedi Jaeger as—“ She takes a breath and stops.

Levi gives her the opportunity to continue before he jumps to any more conclusions. The effort it takes to do so is extraordinary.

“We treated Eren like he was hostile. He wasn’t—we thought he was going to take out the suspect and we wouldn’t have anyone to question and... he threw this.” She holds the lightsaber up delicately, as if it were threatening to go off at any moment. “And we, uh. We followed this, instead of focusing on him and he just... disappeared. He walked right by Auroro and into another alley and he was just _gone_. But we found this.” Her cheeks go dark with the weight of her wrongdoing. Levi stays put where he is in the center of the chamber, but only just. “The—they were selling Hypo. The gang that we were looking for. That’s a military drug, Master Ackerman. It’s a truthtelling drug. We couldn’t—we thought he was going to take out a valuable piece of information.”

Levi holds out his hand, palm up, and it doesn’t shake like he knows it wants to.

Petra says nothing as she steps forward and places Eren’s lightsaber in his hand, allowing him to clip it to his belt beside the two of his own.

“Thank you for your honesty, Officer Ral.”

(He’d known this was a bad idea. Had known that this felt _wrong_.)

“Please inform Captain Dawk that, upon locating our missing Jedi, he won’t be returning to your service. This was a stupid fucking idea and the Order won’t be allowing it to continue.” He speaks like he has the authority, and if he has any say in this—which he does, which he _will_ —Eren will find something else to offer the public if they _truly_ need him to prostrate himself so fully. “If he has any comments, complaints, or concerns, direct him to take a shit somewhere else, preferably on Erwin’s desk, but any toilet will suffice since it’s basically the same difference.”

Hanji howls with laughter behind him. The comment might, _maybe_ , be unfair. But it probably isn’t.

(Jedi aren’t mercenaries. And the moment Erwin allowed Eren to participate in an offensive mission on behalf of the CSF in return for social capital, he’d made Eren into a mercenary.

Levi had been promised that he was free of that.)

Petra looks caught between laughter and embarrassment at the thought of having to deliver that message. But she nods, though her throat probably prevents her from speaking lest she join Hanji on the floor.

“I’ll walk you out. I’m going to find Eren.”

 _Again_ , the voice inside him says.

 _Always,_ the same voice replies.

Petra nods, clearing her throat and blinking away the combined tears of hilarity and shame. Behind them, Hanji tells them goodbye between snorts of laughter, and when the door hisses shut behind the two of them, their humour is muffled entirely by the three lightsabers bumping together on the belt of his tunic.

Petra has the courtesy not to say anything to him as they part ways outside the Temple, allowing him to hail an airtaxi in silence. His request is simple—he asks to be dropped in the undercity, nearest to where he’d felt Eren last, and he pays the cabbie extra for the dive into the slums. The Jedi pay for this trip, like they do any journey that Levi takes, and he feels that it’s only fair after all the shit they allow to happen.

(The two of them have so much to talk about. Levi will not let this go.

He’d told Eren as much on Omwat. Had meant every word.

He doesn’t intend to make a liar of himself. Not now. Not to Eren.)

The lightsabers rattle as Levi begins to walk down the thoroughfare, reaching into the Force and searching.

It’s just another phase of waiting for Eren to reach back.

(But he thinks he’s had about enough of waiting.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren's so haunted by countless ghosts that Levi can't seem to see what it is he's looking for. But that doesn't mean he won't keep searching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're all crying. for maximum effect, listen to "[worry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_ZsSlPc6kg)" by the vamps

(Eren is twelve years old.)

Pedestrians here—of all species—pass him like he’s nothing, because he is. Well, he’s supposed to be. _Well_ , they think he’s nothing because he’s not big enough to threaten anyone, nor is he small enough to tattle. Everyone’s heads are either bowed (because eyes that are on the ground are less likely to get lost, less likely to wander) or they are held in a way that allows a person to walk forward without ever needing to glance to either side. Both of these are ways to keep eyes safely inside their heads where they belong, rather than gouged out or blinded in an unfortunate accident.

It’s this method of ignorance that allows a lot of people to ignore the Jedi wandering around. That’s Eren’s guess anyway. The less a person sees, the less they can tell anyone, the less they can get in trouble for. It’s a rule that he’s not learned to follow yet, despite outgrowing the tattling age.

He doesn’t know if he ever will, you know. Grow into being able to ignore things he’s not supposed to pay attention to.

 _Besides_ , how could anyone ignore two Jedi just _walking_ down the street? As if they’re not outsiders in this place that wiggles beneath the skin and poisons the body over days and weeks and years? Are they trying to hide in the sublevels or are they just sightseeing? There’s nothing to see down here! No one comes to the undercity to sightsee. No one is that stupid. _Especially_ Jedi.

(Everyone knows who the Jedi are—everyone tells stories. Most of them are angry. Smugglers and bounty hunters hate them, slavers hate them more.

Eren knows that’s just because they’re heroes. Villains never like the heroes.)

He watches the both of them from his place tucked against the flashing sign of a cantina. It’s hard to miss them, what with the blonde one being tall enough to stand over the heads of most of the pedestrians out this late. But they feel different too. The tall one—he feels steady and smooth, but not slimy, not toxic. But he also feels... cold. A planet covered in ice that no one’s ever seen the core to. The smaller one—the one Eren had lost in the slow-moving river—feels unbearably warm, warm enough to feel like an ice-burn. Feels—feels bright. It makes his teeth ache, starts a pounding behind his eyes. He feels _sharp_ , and Eren fights the urge to cut himself on that sharpness.

(He wishes he could just shut out these feelings. Maybe the taste of mildew would stop writhing between his teeth.)

The Jedi get further away and he wonders about a lot of things. Wonders again what they’re doing here, wonders what they want. Wonders if they’re really as powerful as the stories say. As legends say.

It is then that he decides to stand, leaving the cantina that he’d chosen as today’s base of operations behind him. There hadn’t been any promising targets in the last hour anyway, so there isn’t any _real_ point in staying behind. Maybe this will work out better. Maybe _this_ is the better idea.

(If he’s lucky, maybe he can get something from them. That way, he’ll have something to show Armin and Mikasa from his little detour. What’s a Jedi going to miss, anyway? They have a whole Temple to go back to. A couple credits won’t be missed.

And, if it just so happens that Eren learns more about the Jedi, well—all the better. Maybe then _he’ll_ be the one telling stories, for once.)

-

There is something about this journey that is at once similiar to and entirely different from the other paths that Levi has walked in the undercity of Coruscant. Memories come together, lining the thoroughfare filled with all sorts of people, making it so that as Levi glances over them, older faces superimpose themselves over these newer ones.

No one holds eye contact with him for very long, though. It makes the residents of the undercity uncomfortable to see a Jedi, _loose_ and wandering around. The thrum of their discomfort tickles his bones, rings softly in his sinuses. Perhaps the increased tension is because of the recent commotion in this little corner of the slums—and if he follows the discomfort, if he reaches out and pries a little into the hearts of the residents down here, perhaps he’ll find what he’s looking for.

More eyes drop away from Levi’s face as he walks with the flow of foot-traffic in his current direction, towards the bar where Eren was stationed to be. It makes memories harder to ignore—reliving the soft splash of his boots in recent runoff, remembering the assault of smells that work their way down every street, delicacies from the edge of the galaxy brought inward to be fried in days’ old grease. It brings to mind the quiet animosity of the conversation he’d shared with Erwin, almost ten years prior, on a street much like this one, filled with the same sights and similar smells. Oddly enough, it even harkens back to Levi’s time back on Tatooine, the planet of his birth with slums that resembled this one, if not quite so well hidden beneath the towering spacescrapers above.

(But that’s the only difference between Tatooine and the Coruscanti undercity—after all, both places are just as invisible to the Senate and to the galaxy at large.)

Even as the past tugs at his robes, Levi knows he doesn’t have time for those memories. Down here, all that those memories do is prevent progress—it impedes his movement and clouds over his perceptions, and that makes it harder to pinpoint Eren, grown up and so alive, who’s already making himself hard enough to find. And so he pulls himself out of the _before_ as best he can, placing his next footstep firmly in the _now_. He repeats the process with the step after that, and then the step after that, until his senses are stretching out and searching for the light and the center of the universe—correction: the light at the center of his universe.

The cantina is dim when Levi enters it, having checked the glowing neon sign upon the window to confirm that this was, in fact, the place where Eren had been stationed on recon duty. There are stains on the warped hardwood and far too many booths in shadowed places for a place that looks much smaller on the outside. It feels as if every one of those shadows in every one of those booths react when the transparisteel door slides shut behind him. He can feel every person’s eyes on him as he walks to the scarred bar, their focus digging into his skin like needles.

But Levi’s not here for them, and so they’re unimportant.

The bartender, a male Twi’lek playing at indifference, glances at him as he wipes down a spill on the far end of the bar, closest to the shadows of a hallway that, presumably, leads to the bathrooms. First, he wipes clockwise, scattering ice across the floor behind the bar. When Levi doesn’t move, he begins to wipe counterclockwise, slowing his motions as if his preoccupation is something that would cause Levi to wander elsewhere and bother someone other than him.

This Twi’lek is not a lucky man, by those standards.

“Did another Jedi come through here?” Levi doesn’t bother to sit down, instead tucking his hands inside his sleeves to wait for an answer, crawling through the bar in the Force to see if there’s anything he can pick up that way. The Twi’lek pretends to clean the bar for another moment more before he looks up, smiling with sharpened teeth in a way that’s probably supposed to send shivers of dread down Levi’s spine.

Mostly, it just annoys the piss out of him.

“Has one gone missing?” The Twi’lek asks, and Levi wonders at his own patience for this search, wonders if he’ll just start tossing people around until he gets answers. Wouldn’t _that_ be embarrassing for the Order? “Let one a little too far off the leash?”

Levi blinks and repeats himself. “Have you seen another Jedi in this bar recently?”

(He can feel Eren’s presence here, seated in the middle of the bar. There’s a chill against his fingers where Eren had toyed with a drink, waiting out the member of a drug ring that would give the entire operation away. If he levels his breathing—if he focuses on how he _knows_ Eren feels inside the Force—he can almost reach into the moments hours before and sit beside him—)

“I don’t remember,” the Twi’lek lies through his pointed teeth, narrowing his eyes. “I’ve had a lot of traffic today.” His dishonesty bleeds into the Force like the stench of something dying, and it pulls at the fraying threads of patience that Levi had barely had when he’d made his way down to the sublevels. He’d asked one question—he’d wanted one honest answer. The fact that he was told a lie complicates things, and one opportunity for lying is all Levi will afford. The longer this takes, the farther Eren gets from him.

The farther Eren gets...

(Levi thinks of Omwat. Feels panic rising from his toes to his throat. He’s so far away—he has to reach _so far_ to find him—

“ _where is eren?_ ”)

Levi pulls his hands from his sleeves and takes a step back, vaulting over the bar in a short jump to get him into the bartender’s space as quickly as possible. The suddenness surprises him, causes him to stumble back against the shelves of alcohol behind him, rattling the bottles gently. The Twi’lek is taller than him by almost a third of a meter, but this isn’t new. It doesn’t make this person any less of a worm beneath his boots.

“I don’t know if you know all that much about Jedi,” Levi speaks quietly, the rising tension in the bar at his back making the hairs on his neck rise in preparation. “But the main idea of what you _do_ need to know is that I can tell you’re fucking lying to me. That _will_ stop right now, or I will teach you not only what I’ve learned from bounty hunters, but I will teach you what I learned from Jedi, and that is not any sort of shit you wanna learn today.”

The height difference gives the Twi’lek no confidence, his nerves whining in the Force like a kicked animal, and Levi puts pressure on him with his presence. Mind-tricks are all well and good, he supposes—you can get what they remember by plucking it from their head. But that’s violating, humiliating, and the minds of sentient creatures can often be filled with things that Levi was never meant to see.

It’s easier when they just give him the information he asks for. The _first_ time.

(But there’s a part of Levi that knows that, if it were to come down to the wire, if it were necessary to pull Eren’s last whereabouts in this bar from this man’s head, there would be no question of Levi’s ability to do so.

He doesn’t have the time to be wasting. He doesn’t have time to be _lied_ to, and Eren can’t be told to wait because of any more lies.

The undercity—much like Tatooine—can swallow people whole.)

“He was here two hours ago,” the Twi’lek says quickly, holding up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “A customer left out the back exit and the Jedi followed them. He didn’t come back. I heard there was a disturbance about two blocks away—that’s all I know, okay? That’s all I know.”

Levi takes a step back and pulls away from him in the Force, taking the long way back around the bar and heading toward the shadowed hallway where the back exit presumably is. He doesn’t stop when the Twi’lek shouts behind him, but he does listen. It’s the least he could do after his threats.

“You fucking Jedi need to stay in your Temple and stop getting into everyone else’s business. Why do you have to complicate _everything_ you touch?”

Levi pushes out the back door, figuring the bartender didn’t need a response. He wouldn’t’ve known what to say to him anyway.

(It is a fair question.

But Levi doesn’t have the time for it. The Jedi will not ruin this for him. And neither will the slums.)

-

Eren has resolved that the Jedi have nothing of value on their persons.

Their steps are unhurried, as if they have nowhere to be, and there have been no less than four attempts on their pockets. Each attempt, however, results in the pickpocket being turned away, unsuccessful. There are, of course, legends that say that the cause of that could be a Jedi mind trick, or something like that—fooling the pickpocket into thinking that there was nothing there. But to do that four separate times? That sounds unrealistic.

Therefore, the Jedi must have nothing. Perhaps they came prepared, then? Maybe there’s a reason they’re here, after all, and Eren just doesn’t understand enough about Jedi to know what it is. Maybe they’re just investigating the crime rate, or something. Maybe the Jedi are actually going to do something about the undercity, for the first time since before Eren was _born_ , probably.

(But there’s a part of him that’s bitter—maybe that’s the wrong word. There’s a part of him that’s _jealous_. He’s jealous that the Jedi have someplace to go back to, that they have the security to wander around down here with nothing on them. It doesn’t seem very fair.

It _isn’t_ very fair.

And it is then that Eren notices the lightsabers swinging at the smaller one’s belt.

What does a Jedi need _two_ weapons for?

And how much are lightsabers worth?)

There’s a twinge in the air around him and Eren slows his footsteps, almost shuffling along the pavement as the smallest Jedi turns around, searching the crowd behind him through the gaps between the people there. The taller one turns with him, arching his eyebrows halfway up his small forehead, and Eren drops his eyes like everyone else down here—he feels the Jedi’s attention pass over him in the way the hairs rise on his arms. There’s flimsiplast waste on the pavement, discarded wrappers of food taken out of bars and hole-in-the-wall diners. The way they crinkle beneath the soles of his shoes almost drowns out the murmurs of the Jedi in front of him.

(Are they closer than they were before?)

“Why the fuck are we down here?” The short one says, and the way he speaks leaves Eren feeling a little blinded, makes his sinuses feel full of something uncomfortable and angry. “We don’t work for the CSF, _Grandmaster_ , and you promised me that when I joined up with you, I wouldn’t be a mercenary anymore.”

The tall one—the _Grandmaster_ of the entire _Jedi Order_ —cuts a glance that feels like—like a vibroblade cutting across his cheek. And he isn’t even _looking_ over here. “You’re not a _mercenary_. We’re doing a single favour, seeing if we can’t sniff out a little bit of information for the CSF. This will certainly reinforce a relationship that’ll be beneficial in the long run.”

The short one snorts, and through a break in the crowd Eren can see his face. He has eyes like—like what people say rain clouds are like. Gray and sharp and heavy with emotion. Or—they could be. Eren isn’t sure where that impression is coming from. That happens to him more often than not.

“Fuck politics,” he says, very succinctly, and turns his head back forward before once again being obscured by pedestrians. “And fuck this.”

Eren has so many questions— _so_ many questions. About the Jedi and the surface of the city, the place that everyone sees on the HoloNet. He wants to know what the sky looks like up there, what the sky looks like on every planet. He wants to ask the Jedi these questions.

(His eyes flicker to the flash of neon on the hilt of a lightsaber.)

But he has mouths to help feed. Has to get back to Armin and Mikasa. Has to go home with _something_.

Eren squares his shoulders and takes a breath.

The flimsiplast no longer crinkles beneath his feet.

-

Every thoroughfare looks the same down here—a street lined with bright and vibrant neon signs, offering the services of dancing clubs and bars, diners and pawn shops, with people too drunk to stand draped outside some of the doors. There are beggars, very rarely, and some shapes in allies that could be anything from garbage to corpses. And, of course, there are the pickpockets, but they’re harder to spot, choosing to fall into the flow of foot traffic instead of lounging in doorways and shadows.

The only reason this street is any different than the other ones he’d been directed down—past the line of police tape and CSF speeders—is that this one _feels_ different. That isn’t to say that it feels any less like slime is clinging to the outside of the skin, or that the hum of suspicion and the hiss of glances cut his way aren’t present. It’s only that this street feels... heavier. The shadows feel a little longer, the people here more a little faster, as if their steps were being haunted by something biting at their heels.

Levi can feel that pressure, feel the need to _go home_ tickling at the back of his head, and this is how he knows that this is precisely where he needs to be at this exact moment. He has to be getting closer, because this _presence_ tastes familiar, even as it tries to push its way past Levi’s defenses and hide from him all at once.

(“ _what does the force say about me?_ ”)

Levi almost tilts his head to follow the whisper of Eren on Mandalore, is tempted to reach into the Force and find him right beside him, a dying fire catching on the side of his face—but knowing that if he did he wouldn’t find Eren there. And so he keeps his head forward, glancing to either side only to gauge how likely it would be for someone to tell him something that he didn’t know, where Eren might be, _have you seen another Jedi recently?_

Panic starts to itch at his ears and Levi can’t tell if it’s because of this overwhelming _push_ against his heart or if it’s because it’s been—it’s been almost an hour and Levi hasn’t found anything concrete. He hasn’t found any information that’s readily relevant, he hasn’t seen _anything_ that might indicate Eren had been here, just this feeling that makes it hard to breathe and think. And how is that different than any _other_ moment where Eren’s on his mind? How is he supposed—

There’s a twitch in the Force behind him, like fingers drawing against the back of his neck in a gentle caress. The touch—the not-touch—sends a shiver down his spine, straight to the soles of his feet, and it’s as if a fog begins to lift from his brain.

Levi takes a calming breath, reaching into himself to find something still. There’s the memory of Mandalore, a constant source of comfort, and Levi inhales again. When he does, he tastes winter on his tongue, washing out the hints of stagnant water and lingering trash that hover behind his teeth. It’s shocking, how this particular memory cuts through the rest of the fog that’s pushing behind his eyes. This _one_ memory with all this power—and it wasn’t even the beginning of something new. It was the climax of a story, rising from the emotions held captive inside two separate bodies.

Or, perhaps, it’s simply the lens in which the memory was captured that makes all the difference—Levi had been in love on Mandalore. And there is nothing that gives him the tenacity he needs quite so much as that.

The Force twitches behind him again, and he slows his footsteps, though he does not drag his heels. His eyes stay focused forward, skating over unremarkable faces, focusing on _that_ feeling, still tickling the back of his neck—a sigh.

(“ _what does the force say about me?_ ”)

-

Eren wonders what his mother would say if she knew that he were about to steal the coolest thing in the galaxy. There’s a lot of her, certainly, that would be very disappointed with the way Eren was handling this whole childhood thing. But he likes to think that maybe there would be a very small part of her that would be impressed with either his ambition or his skill.

After all, he’s had a lot of practice at swiping things by now.

One of the shorter Jedi’s lightsabers is closer to the his hip than the other—though the two sabers are on opposite sides. Perhaps the belt had shifted with all his aimless wandering in the taller one’s company, but either way, the one on the right-hand side is the easier of the two to make a grab for. All he has to do is unclip it, carefully and quickly. He’s stolen things that were harder to get to.

Lightsabers are priceless down here—and the Jedi can always make more, or borrow them from someone else, surely. And this Jedi has _two_.

He can spare one. Eren is _sure_ that he can spare one.

His footsteps are silent as he moves to the right, shifting his weight carefully and traveling with the flow of traffic, glancing at his goal only to make sure it doesn’t change positions before he makes his move. One steadying breath and then two.

And Eren reaches out.

-

Levi turns his body to catch the hand reaching for his lightsaber, his reflexes honed from years of practice, from knowing this sensation above all others. Instead of seeing the apparition of a small child, however—the small child, now grown, that he’d expected to see—he comes face-to-face with the ghost of Mandalore.

Eren’s eyes are just as bright, if more guarded, and the mischievous smile sitting on his lips almost makes it feel like they aren’t on Coruscant at all. If Levi tries, if he focuses hard enough, he can picture a setting winter sun catching on his irises, lighting them from the inside like lanterns. But this isn’t Mandalore, for all that Levi wishes he could go back and do things _right_ , do things the way he’d wanted to. There’s the sharp edge of neon cutting against the side of Eren’s face, hollowing out his cheeks in a way that makes him look so _tired_.

No. This isn’t Mandalore at all.

But neither is it the Coruscant from times past. He looks nothing like the kid that Levi had seen here ten years ago, just like how he _acts_ nothing like he had all that time before. The person standing here now, with his wrist held between them in Levi’s grip, is the person with whom he’d found himself. This is the person who looked at him and made him feel like a newborn star, like a newborn _universe_. This is the person he fell in love with—no longer anything like the child he had been. Just like Levi isn’t anything like the young Jedi _he_ had been.

The mask of Mandalore dies in pieces when Eren smiles a little wider, a little sharper. “Looks like you caught me.”

Levi isn’t sure he likes the way that smile looks. “Looks like you still can’t manage to get into my pockets. So much for your sticky fingers.”

It’s like magic, watching the shift of Eren’s smiles between the facets of who he is and who he wants to be. This one softens at the edges, loses its sharpness, and there’s a hint of pride in the way he squares his shoulders. This face is breathtakingly familiar and it kickstarts Levi’s heart in a way he didn’t know he’d needed.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Eren says, tugging at Levi’s hold on his wrist as he lifts his free hand to hold up one of Levi’s lightsabers, shaking it triumphantly. Levi doesn’t let him go, but he does breathe in the quiet sigh of success that Eren had just breathed _out_. It feels clean—Eren feels _clean_ , in that moment, nothing at all like the world in which he’d started to grow up. “Gotcha.”

(As long as Eren feels like that—as long as Eren gives him hints and nudges, as long as Levi can touch him in the Force—there is always a way to fix things.

Levi _knows_ that there’s a way to fix things.)

Amidst the swirl of emotions dancing within Levi’s chest, there’s a little bit of shock there. For all that Eren had given him an indication of how he was feeling, a glimpse of who he is, he hadn’t felt him coming until the second reach. He’d managed to pilfer one of Levi’s lightsabers, something that no one had ever managed to do, much less someone who has a _reputation_ for swiping things that don’t need swiping.

Levi’s confidence doesn’t _waver_ , or anything—but he doesn’t like not being able to feel where Eren is. It makes him nervous, _terrified_. What if he’d _lost_ him down here—what if he didn’t know? He’s sure he would have. He was sure when Officer Ral brought Eren’s lightsaber to him that he would know if Eren were dead, but he’d just managed to—

(He hates being at war with himself—with the things he has done but should’ve done better. With the things he doesn’t know but feels like he ought to.)

Eren offers out the lightsaber between them, arching both eyebrows as pedestrians pretend they’re not standing in the middle of the street. Levi appreciates that courtesy. He’d rather not have to explain to an enterprising drug-dealer what, exactly, two Jedi are arguing about in the undercity. That’s just bad press.

“You could’ve taken yours back with that little freebie,” Levi tells him, taking his lightsaber and clipping it beside Eren’s, making the weight distribution on his hips uneven once more. “You seem to have a habit of misplacing it.”

His eyes blaze with neon intensity, and the breath of humour is gone. _Eren_ is gone, swallowed by the squirming sensations of Coruscant, overwhelmed by that _pressure_ again, the suggestion of _go home, go away, turn back_ —

And if Levi hadn’t been sure that that feeling was Eren before, well, now he’s positive.

“Why do you keep following me?” Eren almost rumbles when he speaks, a symptom of exerting himself so fully in the Force. But Levi’s never been weak to suggestions, no matter how much weight it seems is being pressed against him, and if he listens he can hear how Eren would sound if he weren’t trying _so hard_ to push him away.

“Why do you keep running away?”

For a split second the pressure exerts itself to the point where Levi almost can’t breathe, a couple of the pedestrians breaking into a panicked run in the opposite direction from where they’d been walking—but then it stops, and it’s just Eren inside the Force. Bright, alive, shapeless. _Warm_. Terrified and alone. And there’s a wound somewhere on his body. Levi can feel the sting against his own bicep.

(Eren is burning himself up.)

“Go home, Levi,” Eren says instead of answering Levi’s question. There’s no subtlety in his refusal to respond, just the very direct, very Eren way of redirection. That is to say, he puts up a wall. “Just go home, this time. I don’t want to fight with you. I’m _really_ fucking tired.”

“Then come home _with_ me. Rest at home.”

Another ghost steps forward to haunt them both and Levi wonders how many memories Eren clings to this way, hiding behind the different faces of himself. This one is from Omwat, carved from stone and nothing like Eren at all. “ _Leave_ , Levi. Leave me here for _once_ in your _life_ and do what’s fucking best for you. _Go home_.”

There’s a sharp exhalation of volcanic wind within the Force that almost scorches Levi’s cheeks, but he reaches out anyway, scalding his fingers. The flinch between them is so violent that it shows up on Eren’s face, wrinkles his nose and twists his mouth. He opens his mouth to speak again, but Levi beats him there.

“Come home with me.” He tries a variation of the words that worked on Omwat. But this time, _come back_ isn’t good enough. It’s not specific enough, it’s not _meaningful_ enough. Home means something, it _has_ to.

It has to mean something.

“ _No_.” The word slaps against the pavement with a wet sound, echoing around them and bouncing off the walls. Eren looks shocked that he’d said it at all. But he continues anyway. “No, I’m not going anywhere with you.”

If Levi were a weak man, he would wheeze. And so he does when he speaks next. “Why _not?_ ”

(He’s holding on with both hands. He’s holding on so hard that his knuckles ache. He will not let go. He will _not_ let go. They have so much to talk about.

Levi has _so much_ to say.)

“I’m in _love_ with you!” Eren’s voice cracks and shame wraps around Levi in the Force like a noose as he tries to pull his wrist away—but not hard enough to actually break Levi’s hold. “I’m in love with you, and it fucking hurts you. And I _can’t_ go back and fucking pretend that I’m not in love with you, and I can’t—I’m _tired_ of hurting you, I’m _tired_ of hurting you every time we’re in a room together, or we look at each other, or we—“ Eren blinks and the stone face of Omwat tries and fails to reassert itself. The Eren Levi has been looking for trembles underneath the mask. “Or we meet each other in the—I’m _tired_. And I can’t keep hurting you. I _won’t_ keep hurting you. So _fuck off_.”

Levi’s chest caves inward, crushing his heart and his lungs beneath the weight of what Eren had just told him.

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” Because this—love isn’t supposed to feel like what Eren just described. It isn’t supposed to feel like the end of things. It’s a _beginning_ , something new. How could it be so painful?

If this were any other situation, if this were _any_ other moment, the look of complete incredulity would have brought Levi to laughter. But it isn’t any other moment. It’s now, and it’s threatening to choke him.

“Don’t be stupid,” Eren barks out a laugh, the _worst_ kind of laugh. One with no humour, made entirely of sharp edges that probably cut his throat when he coughs it up. “Don’t be _stupid!_ I’ve been—ever since Mandalore, you’ve been nothing but—I’ve been hurting you since then. Since I—since we—since the kiss, every time you’ve looked at me, I could feel it. Don’t play dumb.” His eyes harden like gemstones. There’s something swimming inside them. “Don’t _lie_.”

The accusation smarts against Levi’s jaw with the force of a punch. “I’m not lying. I don’t—I’m not _lying_.”

“You _are!_ ” This time when Eren pulls away, he breaks Levi’s grip, taking a step back. This looks bad—this looks like failure, like Eren is about to run, _again_ , and Levi can feel his panic rising so hard and fast that it makes _him_ get the urge to vomit as Eren’s cheeks pale. “You are, because I’ve _felt_ it. I’m not fucking _stupid_ , Levi. I’m not—“ He rolls his lips over his teeth to keep them from quivering.

And Levi watches Eren break open. Watches as he casts a glance to the side and tries to take a steadying breath that only serves as the precursor for a soft sob. Tears rise and gather at the corners of his eyes, glittering like stones, before they push themselves over the edge and crawl down his cheeks in streams.

The ghost of Mandalore, the statue of Omwat—all of them fall from Eren’s shoulders like robes.

“I fucked up.” Levi takes the step forward that Eren had taken back and he can see Eren’s shoulders shake with trembling breaths and almost-inaudible hiccups. “I fucked up so bad, Levi. I love you—I love you so much and I fu—I fucked up _so bad_. I can’t—can’t go back with you, I’m so tired of—of hurting you, I can’t go back with you, I can’t.”

“Oh,” Levi swallows thickly. “Oh, _Eren_.”

Levi reaches for him even as Eren tries to shy away, taking his face in both hands and feeling the tears upon cheeks. He drags his thumbs through them, catching some and missing others, and the tremors in Eren’s body make their way down to Levi’s elbows.

And Levi brings their foreheads together, holding them in place as Eren sniffles softly.

(“ _a warrior’s kiss_ ,” is whispered in his ear from far away.)

“I was losing you,” Levi explains softly into the noise of the undercity, thumbing at the base of Eren’s skull, toying with the hair there as he keeps their foreheads close. “I was losing you, but I didn’t know how, or to what.” Levi takes a breath that feels like new and different and freeing, even though Eren is hiding away from him in the Force as best he can. He feels the memory of chapped lips against his own. “You kissed me, and I knew that after that I couldn’t let you go. And that feeling was still haunting me—that fucking thought I kept having, that you were already gone and there was nothing I could do. You smiled and then it already felt like a memory. And I didn’t know I was losing you to secrets, to questions you hadn’t asked, to—to the Order. I didn’t know. _You_ didn’t hurt me, Eren.” He punctuates this by rubbing their foreheads together, back and forth. “You didn’t hurt me.”

Eren only whimpers, squeezing his eyes shut. More tears manage to leak out before he does.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Levi repeats. “You _didn’t_ hurt me. After Mandalore, I was scared. I was more scared than I had ever been. I should’ve kissed you a second time, like I wanted to, but I was a fucking coward.”

The sound he makes next is not a whimper, but Levi doesn’t have a name for it. But it’s not a discouraging sound, and something vibrant begins to peek out from behind the clouds inside Levi’s soul. The stars held inside his body begin to pull themselves out of the darkness. And so he continues.

“I was a coward. You know why the Jedi are so worried about attachment?” Eren says nothing, but when Levi reaches toward him in the Force, there’s a hesitant touch in return. It threatens to make his throat close. “Because then you’re scared. You’re scared you’ll leave them behind, or they’ll leave you behind, or that something terrible will happen. Fear of loss leads to envy of those who have what you _can’t_ , leads to anger at _why_ , leads to hate. And I was scared. That’s what you were feeling in me.”

There’s a particularly loud sniffle then, and the pedestrians—no longer pushed into running toward home, wherever that happens to be—are starting to spare them glances when they pass by.

“I shouldn’t’ve—on Mandalore, I shouldn’t’ve—“ He coughs and Levi makes use of that opportunity.

“Shut up. You’re not _listening_. I _wanted_ to kiss you. Shit, Eren, I wanted to kiss you _again_. I wanted to do nothing but kiss you—and that was a gateway. I was fucking in love with you then, and it was terrifying, because when I wasn’t looking, somehow I’d managed to make a world around you, and I didn’t know how to fix it or what to say. Being a Jedi was important to you, and I couldn’t—I didn’t want to make you choose. I wasn’t sure if we even could.”

Eren opens his eyes and they still glimmer with tears, catching the neon lights that have been their most dedicated witnesses. He coughs, again, softly, and his lips resume their trembling when he speaks.

“What about now?”

Levi stills his thumb against Eren’s hair. “What?”

“What about now?” Eren writhes a little in the Force between them, looking away with a nervous twitch. “How do you feel about me now?”

A sound gets stuck in Levi’s throat as he watches Eren’s face, searches it with the careful consideration he’s sure is most often spared for art. But this is a delicate moment for them—the balance of the universe is shifting. Levi can _feel_ it, the galaxy changing beneath his feet.

(When Levi looks at him, he knows that Eren had hung the stars. Perhaps not in the skies above them, or in the skies they’ve seen. But Eren had hung the stars in Levi’s universe, each and every one, and the thought leaves him so breathless it hurts his lungs.

It makes him feel euphoric.)

“I’m _really_ fucking in love with you.” Eren exhales like he’s been kneed in the gut, his breath brushing over Levi’s lips. “I love you. Come home with me. We—“ Levi swallows, again, because this is something that needs to occur, this is his opportunity to carve out space enough for them to talk, uninterrupted, for _once_. “We should talk, don’t you think?”

They stand like that for a moment or two more, foreheads still held together, Eren still shaking through the shift between them, before he pulls away and nods, slowly. Levi only drops his hands away when Eren nods with more feeling, when he opens up in the Force like a star bursting over the horizon of its orbiting planets.

And Levi smiles at him, small, one hand coming out in an offer, palm up.

Eren takes it—slowly, his fingers curling around Levi’s as if to give him enough time to change his mind and pull away. Instead, Levi laces their fingers, holds on _tight_ , because this is worth holding onto, worth fighting for, worth following Eren to every corner of the known universe until they both stop running scared.

Eren clears his throat, though when he speaks it’s no less rough from crying. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah,” Levi says in return, squeezing Eren’s fingers gently. “Okay.”

(When they start walking, searching for the nearest taxi platform, Levi hears whispers behind them.

“ _that was actually quite beautiful_ ,” someone says—it sounds like a Kubaz, soft and nasal.

 _I know_ , Levi thinks to himself, pulling Eren around his shoulders in the Force like the protective shroud he always had been, holding on with every part of him in case he’s worried enough to flinch away. _I know it was._

Somehow, even with tearstains drying on his cheeks and an untended scrape singing in the Force, Eren manages to be beautiful.

And now, perhaps after all this mess, Levi will finally tell him so.)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m telling you I love you.” Levi’s fingers come undone again, and they don’t knot back together. “But I’m asking you to let me.” And Eren cannot speak for lack of breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm crying this chaptered-thing is finished
> 
> time to write the next part, nudge nudge, wink wink. i promise it only goes up from here.

Nothing is coming out of his mouth the way he wants it to.

(“ _where have you_ been?” Jean had said, minutes before. They’d almost made it across the atrium of the Temple without incident, but there he’d been, sweeping across the polished stone floor as if he’d been waiting for them to show up. “ _you were supposed to be back_ hours _ago_.”

“ _i got lost,_ ” Eren had said without thinking, because that’s how he seems to do a lot of things. For him, these days, it looks like thinking just gets in the way. He wishes that it would try a little harder to get in the way. “ _levi had to come get me. you know how it goes. shoot for hapes, end up on omwat_.”

The air had frozen between the three of them and Eren had wondered if Levi was going to pull away from him then and there, yanking away his presence in the Force fast enough to tear skin. He’d braced for it, even. Pulled his walls close to his body and shifted his weight on his feet.

But the wound never came.)

“That wasn’t funny,” Levi says as he sheds his boots by his door after it whispers closed behind them. It pulls Eren into the now—up the turbolift and away from the atrium where they’d left Jean to parse out his own ideas of what had happened in the undercity. Levi’s watching him when he looks up from the boots poised perfectly parallel to one another, the storms of his eyes catching the glittering neon of the city as it stretches across the floor, let in by an uncovered window in the bedroom, just out of sight.

“What?” Eren clears his throat around the word, buying time for his mouth to cooperate with him for the first time today. Levi steps around him as he takes off his own boots, leaving them beside Levi’s in a crooked display.

Levi’s fingers brush over the light switch by the door, dulling the neon kaleidoscope dancing across the carpet. “What you said to Jean. It wasn’t very funny.”

Words skate across his tongue and none of them taste right. But he speaks anyway.

“I thought it was,” which isn’t entirely true. But it’s true enough, and he supposes that’s all that matters, paying no mind to the way the words curdle in his mouth. “And it’s not really wrong. You _did_ have to come to get me both times. That’s not a lie, or anything. That’s how it _went_.”

Something struggles on Levi’s face and Eren doesn’t have a label for it. “That’s not how it went. I didn’t _have_ to do anything. I—” He stops, thinning his lips as he watches Eren’s face with a level of attention that prickles at his cheeks, pulling warmth beneath his skin as his eyes glance by. It’s not new, feeling exposed under Levi’s inspection, just like it’s not new that his focus is a living thing in the Force around him, raising the hair on the back of his neck.

“Are you telling me I wasn’t lost?” Eren asks when he doesn’t finish whatever it was that he’d wanted to say.

Levi watches him for too many heartbeats more, his eyes moving back and forth across Eren’s face in a pattern that he can’t follow. It makes his head hurt to try. His eyes are the only part of him that move in this stretch of time that’s setting Eren on edge. He’s like a statue in his own room, the only splash of colour in the minimalist grayscale that the Jedi love to decorate with.

He looks away when he can’t hold his eyes up anymore, and tries to find _anything_ else to look at.

(But that’s always been hard for him. Eren can’t really remember a time when he didn’t try and find Levi within his peripheral vision, much less inside the Force.

And now, for the first time since Mandalore, Eren feels he can _see_ Levi. He’s still bright and breathtaking and world-shatteringly beautiful. But he’s not blinding, anymore, and that’s terrifying. Because if he can see Levi, Levi can see him.

He’s not sure he’ll like what he finds.)

His eyes find a couch just inside the dormitory, black and smooth and virtually unused.

If this were any other moment, if this were any other time, Eren would have thrown himself upon it, wiggling on the surface with a delighted sound. “ _i can’t believe Masters get a_ couch _,_ ” he would say. “ _a whole living room. who do you even entertain in here?_ ” He’d roll over and Levi would watch him and there’d be a smile pulling at his lips even as he tried to affect seriousness.

The stillness, and the vision of a potential future, is broken when Levi shrugs off his outer robe, folding it over his arms twice and turning around. It takes Eren a moment to follow after him, his brain needing to catch up with the reflex to follow, but he falls into step behind him like he always does, watching as he tosses his robe into a clothes basket in the corner of his bedroom the moment they cross the threshold.

“Yours too.” Eren blinks at the line of Levi’s shoulders before focusing on his face.

“What?” Again, his mouth fails him. And again, he tried to correct it. “My what?”

“Your _robe_. Take it off. I want to get a look at that bullet wound.”

He flinches in the Force when Levi reaches for him there, watches as the reflex sends a twitch of pain across Levi’s face and twists his stomach. He corrects himself, meeting Levi in the middle as confidently as he can, trying to kick down the walls that are already trying to build themselves back up, as if what had happened in the undercity was already fading into a memory.

(“ _i get it_ ,” Levi had said, putting himself squarely between Eren and Jean, reading the Force with expert accuracy. “ _you’ve got shit to say. you don’t like being kept out of hierarchical loops, or whatever. but he’s busy right now._ ”

It had reminded him of when the CSF had taken him after Omwat. Levi had, just like he was then, planted himself as firmly between Eren and them, shaking in the Force with something that rattled his bones like panic, reeked like terror.

But in the Temple Levi had only felt like himself, only sounded like himself, and he had continued by saying, “we _need to talk right now._ ”

Levi had taken his hand and pulled him away.)

His hands are cold, now.

“It’s a _scratch_ ,” Eren says, pulling his robe tighter around himself, feeling dirt grind into the thick fabric. “It’s not even infected. I’ve gotten worse practicing with a lightsaber.”

“Eren, _please_.” Levi’s eyes flicker and the Force goes quiet around them both. He’s hiding. “Just let me take a fucking look at it because if I had _been there_ , you wouldn’t’ve had it at all. Just—let me see. It’ll be quick.” A sigh, and it trembles, and Eren feels his heart quiver in response.

“Yeah.” Eren shrugs out of his own robe, rolling it over his arms just as Levi had. He can’t say _no_ to that. It wouldn’t be—he can’t say no. This isn’t the time to be pushing and pushing and _pushing_ Levi away. They’re supposed to be—he _can’t_ say no. “Okay. It’s just a cut, though. It’s really not that big a deal. I was careless, and—“

Levi takes the rolled up fabric from between his hands and throws it into the clothes basket with his own.

His windpipe closes at the sight of it.

(It’s so domestic that it makes his temples throb, strikes up the craving he’s had for whatever-this-is to the point where he’s sure it’ll kill him. It _has_ to kill him. Otherwise it’ll never stop.)

Levi nudges him gently with his elbow, nodding toward the bed as he walks to his bathroom, his footsteps silent against the carpet. It springs beneath his backside when he drops upon it, crossing his legs beneath him while he waits.

There really _is_ nothing here in terms of décor. No posters or holoimages, no remnants of anything. There's no evidence that Levi even has any hobbies. No knitting needles or finished projects in sight. Even is closet is closed, hiding however many replicas of his Jedi robes he has. There might be some laypeople’s clothes in there, for the assignments where they have to infiltrate something-or-other that always goes to shit somehow, through no fault of their own.

(Eren wonders what Levi would say if he could see the state of _his_ quarters. Holoimages are everywhere on his small desk, clipped from HoloNet news broadcasts where the two of them had been successful in some inconsequential Jedi mission. He’s got pressed plants from planets they’d visited—blossoms from the Mother Jungle of Ithor, a gift for preventing the poisoning of the deified vegetation; dried tubers from Dantooine, a form of currency among native populations; a pressed fern from Mandalore; a clipping of razor moss from Tatooine.

And in the corner of his closet there’s the armour he’d worn almost two years prior—polished, but untouched since.)

But just because there’s not much in here doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like Levi has lived in this space. There are traces of him everywhere. Memories of footsteps pacing in front of the couch in the living room, ghosts of him hunched over the desk to file reports to put in the Archives of whatever escapade Eren had managed to fuck up in his presence, hints of soft sighs as he’d crawled into bed for at least a couple hours of sleep before a new day began all over again.

If Eren shuts his eyes, he can picture all of it.

“Where do you keep going?” And his eyes snap open when the mattress dips beneath Levi’s weight. A bemused expression sits upon his face as he tucks one of his legs underneath his backside, wrapping around Eren with the Force in the same motion. It takes a moment for Eren to gather himself enough to lean into the touch, swallowing around a too-large lump in his throat. “You keep wandering off.”

Levi sets a small box in the small space between them on the mattress, taking Eren’s _minutely_ injured arm and rolling up the sleeve until he can tuck the fabric in at the shoulder. It gives Eren time to think, to piece together sentences that might sound okay before they’re summarily rejected, either too complicated or too simple an answer for a question like that.

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” The words his mouth chose fall out of his mouth, unbidden and not properly considered, to writhe between them on the simple duvet. Levi’s fingers still against the cut left behind by the slugthrower. “About stuff, I mean. You said we should talk, but I don’t know what you want to hear.”

( _i dream of omwat,_ he could tell him. _i dream that i killed you and i can’t forgive myself._

 _i love you so much_ , he could say instead. _i love you so much i’ve done nothing but fuck it up._ )

Levi regards him with infinite patience, and it’s killing him. Just like _everything_ else.

“I don’t _want_ to hear anything,” Levi says. And then he pauses, his lips curling and there’s a familiar flutter of shame between them. Familiar, of course, because Eren knows _exactly_ how it tastes when it rises up in his throat—only this time, it isn’t coming from him. “That’s not what I meant. I just mean... I mean, what do _you_ want to _say_?”

“I don’t know,” Eren says, chewing on the words before spitting them out and dropping his eyes to watch Levi’s hands as they fall to pull open a bacta patch. The wax flimsiplast crinkles between his fingers and it’s loud enough to swallow the sound of their breathing. “I’m sorry, I guess. I don’t know—I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m _sorry_.”

The feeling from the undercity rises around him then, fingers wrapping around his throat and squeezing out his breath. It makes his eyes burn, his throat knotting itself against more tears. _Shit_ , he doesn’t need a repeat performance of that. No one needs to see that again. _He_ doesn’t want to see that again, and yet here he is, tucking his arms against his chest, Levi’s hands blurring in front of him has his eyes fucking _water_ , and apologies topple to the mattress from between his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t’ve—Omwat.” A sharp inhale and the smudges of Levi’s hands pull away from the bacta patch to lift Eren’s head, even as he fights against it. “I’m so _sorry_ , Levi, I—“ his throat closes further around an angry sound, an admonition against himself, and he doesn’t—he _doesn’t_ —

“Shut up,” Levi speaks softly, so softly that words that _should’ve_ had a sharp edge only brush against his face in a tender touch. “Shut up. You’ve already—shut up.”

“You _said_ —“  he hiccups on a sound that tears at his mouth. “You said we should talk.”

“And _now_ I’m saying shut up.” Levi huffs out a breath that ghosts over Eren’s cheeks. “You’ve _already_ apologized. I’ve already said you don’t have to be sorry. Eren, _I_ am sorry. The whole fucking _Order_ should be sorry. You—“ Another huffed breath, another brush against his face. Levi’s fingers are firm against his chin. “What are you so _sorry_ for?”

“I’m just _sorry!_ ” He pulls his face away from Levi’s hand, shoving his own fingers through his hair. Now that the words have found him—now that they don’t rot in his mouth like useless decorations—they won’t _stop_. Apparently the sublevels hadn’t been enough. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry for everything. For—for Omwat and the—the whole _trial_ , and for _this_. I’m sorry you got—I’m sorry it was _me_ that you got stuck with. I’m sorry for—for _Mandalore_ , and everything afterward and everything before that and—“

Levi’s palm is warm against his mouth. His inability to speak brings silence back into Levi’s quarters, but it makes his breathing unbearably _loud_. His lungs feel too small and his eyes won’t stop _watering_ , and there is nothing more pathetic in this entire universe than he has been today. In _any_ universe, probably.

“ _Don’t_ be sorry for Mandalore.” Where Levi’s voice had been soft before, it’s sharp now. His eyes are narrowed, his lips thin, and it shakes something free inside Eren’s chest. “Fuck, don’t be sorry for Mandalore. _I’m_ sorry for Mandalore. And we can both go back and forth about who’s the most sorry all night, but I don’t want to, because it _doesn’t_ matter. You didn’t do _shit_ wrong on Mandalore and I’ll not have you being sorry for something that I should’ve—“

Levi’s mouth twists as he drops his hands into his lap.

“I should’ve been more clear,” he murmurs. “I should’ve been more clear. I should’ve—when you heard about Jedi children, I should’ve been there for you, too. This is—if you’re sorry, so am I. Omwat would’ve—“ Levi blinks and lifts his eyes to Eren’s face. They’re—Eren can see— “I hurt _you_. You said you hurt me, but that isn’t true. I’m the one eating shit here, kid.” Levi blinks and his eyelashes catch tears to keep them from falling, but Eren had _seen_ them there. “All I was worried about was losing you, and I _did_. I lost you. I couldn’t find you anywhere close by, and you were so far away that I—“

Eren’s heart stops, he thinks. It’s too quiet to be beating. And Levi’s not done speaking. “I had to find you.” His shoulders roll in a shrug that should be liquid, but it’s stiff at the edges like cooked sugar. “You were gone, and it was my fault, and I had to find you.”

“Well,” gravel tumbles out of his mouth in the place of his voice and so he tries again. “Well, you found me.”

It takes a moment for Levi to say, “yeah.” And there’s another pause before, “I always do.” An even longer one before, “I love you.”

Eren’s heart drops into his stomach.

(It had been real, then. What Levi had said, down in the darkness, where the sharp eyes of the Order couldn’t see, where the only people who could hear were untrustworthy miscreants and forgettable faces.

“ _i love you. come home with me._ ”

But here, the light of the city shines. Here, anyone can listen. Here it’s different.)

He finds himself once more without anything to say.

“I love you,” Levi repeats, a soft breath of rain against a window. “I love you so much I don’t know what to do with myself. I look at you, and all I can do is love you.” He blinks slowly and Eren is unable to look away. The memories of tears cling to his eyelashes. “I know it seems like—I know that I’m just telling you shit, right now. I know it’s just a lot of—“ His fingers twist together in his lap before he undoes them, only to repeat the process. “I’m _telling_ you I love you.” Levi’s fingers come undone again, and they don’t knot back together. “But I’m asking you to let me.”

The first time he tries to speak again, it’s a wheeze. The second time, it’s a cough—and then a whimper. But his voice comes back, even though it’s being pushed through a straw, and he holds Levi’s gaze when it does.

It’s like watching stormclouds.

“I love you too,” Eren replies. “I love you. I love you.” The words taste different, but not rancid. They don’t taste like blood, and they’re not cutting his mouth when he says them. They’re just—they’re there, and they taste _sweet_ , and there go his fucking eyes again— “I love you, Levi, holy _shit_.”

Levi’s hand is trembling when he cups the side of Eren’s face, and it trembles still when he leans into the touch. But Levi doesn’t pull away. Instead, he gets closer, and the wrapper from the unused bacta patch crumples under his knee.

Their lips brush gently and Levi’s mouth is warm, gentle. His lips are chapped, like they were on Mandalore, but they’re soft. They kiss again and Eren thinks his own breathing is uneven. Their lips touch a third time, and Levi reaches into the Force between them, an offer of meeting in the middle like they always do. Like they always have.

And Eren thinks that, maybe, he’s a little tired of meeting in the middle. The middle leaves space for him to build walls around himself, leaves too much room to shut Levi out, and he’s so tired of that that his bones creak at the thought.

His fingers find Levi’s tunic and he pulls himself forward, both with his hands and within the Force, tangling the two of them together, each devouring the other. There is no middle here—not when Eren’s mouth opens under Levi’s tongue. Not when their tongues drag against one another. Their heads tilt, change angles, and they kiss again.

(And he’s on _fire_.)

Levi is _everywhere_ , without the middle meeting-place. Eren can feel him beneath his skin, brushing against his bones, and he thinks he might combust as Levi crawls on top of him, their positions having been lost inside the kiss. His feet are somewhere close to Levi’s pillows, his toes curling against the duvet with Levi’s weight on top of him, and there’s nothing like this in _any_ universe—nothing like this feeling anywhere.

Levi learns the inside of Eren’s mouth with meticulous care and Eren returns the favour in the way he’s been wanting to for—for ages now. His hands move from Levi’s tunic, where they’d been white-knuckled since he’d pulled Levi close, to tangle in his hair. This exploration is so new, the way Levi sighs against his lips so _perfect_ , and he shudders to the tips of his toes.

And all he can feel is Levi deep down in the marrow of his bones.

(It’s euphoric.)

“I love you,” Eren says to the ceiling and to Levi’s lips, wet against the line of his throat.

Laughter, quiet like distant thunder, is tucked into the hollow of his pulse.

“I love you too,” Levi tells him.

And the Force is alive with it.

-

Captain Nile Dawk experiences a lot of surprises in his line of work. But he cannot say that he expected to see Jedi Eren Jaeger in his office this afternoon. Especially not after the message that Petra had received from Levi himself the evening before, basically accusing Nile of being the shit-for-brains Captain that he’d always known, deep down in his little Jedi heart, that he was. Frankly, he can’t say that he ever expected to see Jedi Eren Jaeger in his office ever again.

“I was told that you wouldn’t be back today,” Nile says, hoping for some hint as to the origin of this excursion without having to directly _ask_. He doesn’t want to seem too nosy. Jedi _hate_ that.

(Of course, that would mean that Eren didn’t flinch everyone called him _Jedi_ Jaeger. And that’s a little too much to ask, most days.)

“I’m not _back_ , really,” Eren tells him, his hands hidden in the sleeves of robes that look new. At the very least, they’re a different colourscheme; all tans and light browns rather than the darker shades and blacks that he’d taken to wearing since before he’d gotten his Knighthood. It makes him look younger—but it makes him look happier, too. “They put me in youngling classes to make up the rest of my, uh, community service.”

Nile arches an eyebrow and tries to roll his lips against a smile at the abashed drop of Eren’s eyes.

(Better than having those eyes on him—they look like they could see through permacrete.)

“They put you in kiddie classes?”

“Meditation lessons, mostly.” Eren’s eyebrows wiggle and a smile touches his mouth. It’s thin and a little fragile, but it’s a better show than he’d been putting on for ages, if gossip is anything to go by. “Naptime, historically.”

“ _That’s_ why you’re in those classes in the first place, kid.” Eren laughs, just as shaky as his smile had been. “And I see you’ve got new clothes. Skin your knees in the sublevels?”

Something flickers across Eren’s eyes, cloud-cover over a sea, but it doesn’t linger long enough for Nile to pay it much mind. What _does_ linger are the nervous gestures, the shifting of the kid’s weight between his feet, the way his throat bobs around a thick swallow. But he smiles, and attempt at the sharp and mischievous thing he’d been able to pull up on cue once upon a time, and huffs his hair from his forehead.

“Levi said black wasn’t my colour and that I ought to change it.” Nile watches as Eren schools his face into a semblance of Levi’s, and it’s really not that bad an imitation. “‘You look like you’re going to a fucking funeral,’ or something like that.” He pauses and there’s a softness in the line of his mouth that hadn’t been there a moment prior. “Besides, I don’t like who I—I wanted to change so that when I look at myself—“ He stops and clears his throat, shrugging. “Anyway, I picked these up in the Temple before we came over here.”

Nile blinks, surprised. “Levi’s with you?”

Eren blinks, just as surprised by Nile’s question. “Um. Yeah. I was going to come myself and leave a note, but what with my recent history, I thought it might be a better idea to tell him where I was going. And he wanted to come, so...” When Eren frowns this time, it’s entirely his own. “Should I not have?”

Nile waves it off, an attempt at correcting the mistake his reaction had made. “No, I just haven’t seen him in a while. Since—“ He blinks, again, and eyes Eren’s face.

(He hadn’t seen Levi since Eren’s arrest and there had been a level of grief on Levi’s face that had been nauseating to see. So perhaps it would be better to say that Nile hadn’t seen Levi since even before that, because he can’t recall the last time he’d seen the man properly happy.

“ _where the fuck are you taking my Jedi?_ ”

The whisper-scream of a loaded question still gives him chills at night.)

“I haven’t seen him in a while,” Nile finishes lamely. “But why _are_ you here? From my understanding, I wasn’t to so much as look at you, much less speak to you. Levi was _very_ clear about that.” It’s something Nile’s always respected. Levi is the most forward person in regards to what is and is not acceptable that probably exists in the universe. It’s refreshing after having to deal with politicians on a daily basis.

“Oh,” Eren says, as if he, too, had forgotten why he was here. “I just came to say thanks.”

Nile’s hand falls away from where it had been propping up his chin. “Pardon?”

“Um,” and another small smile rises onto his lips. “Thank you? Is that a foreign concept, like, generally, or just from me, specifically—“

“What are you thanking me _for_?”

“Uh,” Eren tilts his head back and forth, thoughtfully. “Everything, I guess. Like, all the shit you’ve had to put up with. The fact that you talked to me like I was a... person and not...” He shrugs and trails off, not bothering to pick up the end of his sentence and finish it out. He just stands there, looking a little small for a Jedi his size, and he repeats, “so, thanks.”

Nile and Eren have had a rather complicated history. He’s not the most _relaxed_ Jedi that Nile has ever met, nor is he the most tactful, or the easiest to get along with. But for all the trouble Eren has caused, for all the trouble Levi has grudgingly apologized for as Eren was growing up, there is no person he’s ever met that has been so dedicated. There’s a zeal in Eren Jaeger that newborn stars would envy, and for the first time in a long time Nile finds himself coming face-to-face with it.

If anyone would ask, Nile would have to say that he’s probably a little proud of the kid.

And so he pushes away from his desk with a grunt, standing in the same motion. “You’re welcome, though I’m sure I could’ve made this whole thing easier on you.” He pauses, stretching as an excuse to consider what he wants to say. He doesn’t want Eren _knowing_ that it’s praise. And so he crafts it around an apology. “I’m sorry for the way my officers reacted last night. It was hardly professional. You handled it pretty well, all things considering.”

“Gee,” Eren snickers as if he’d seen right through Nile’s feeble attempt at disguised praise. “Thanks, _Captain_.”

He snorts, stepping around his desk. “Come on. Let me walk you and your faithful Jedi Master back down to the lobby. I don’t want you getting stopped and arrested.”

Eren watches him, bemused. “We didn’t have trouble getting _up_ here.”

“ _Maybe_ , just maybe, I’m sick of filing case and arrest reports from last night and would like to get out of this fucking office. Could you _please_ do me this service and walk out of here like a good boy?”

The laugh Nile receives is shockingly honest, and his office door whispers open when Eren walks toward it. Levi is, in fact, waiting outside, lounging against the wall looking thoroughly bored with the entire beehive of activity that has no doubt been going on around him the whole time he’d been outside.

“Took you long enough,” Levi speaks to Eren before he bestows Nile with a glance. “I don’t know what you’re here for, but we’re not taking you home with us. He’s not ready for the responsibility of a pet yet.”

Nile rolls his eyes. “I’m just escorting you to the lobby. What is it with you two and rejecting the kindnesses that come from the bottom of my heart?”

Levi only stares at him before turning around, Eren following after him not even a heartbeat behind. “If you really want to do the legwork, that’s your business. But you _could’ve_ avoided it, and it’s not my problem if your legs cramp because you’ve been on your ass all day.”

Eren snickers, falling into step beside him seamlessly.

(He’s missed this, he thinks. It’s been a while since he’d been spoken to like that.)

They don’t talk much as they walk and Nile can’t say that he expected a wealth of conversation from them. They’re Jedi, and they’re close, and so much of what could be said is exchanged through glances and exchanged feelings, or something like that. However the Force is supposed to work.

But down one of the endless hallways on the lobby floor, Nile glances at Eren’s hand when it twitches between the two of them, reaching out across the small space. It’s a physical reaction to something Nile can’t feel, and it’s the first indication since they’d left the office that they’d been communicating at all. But before he can make contact with Levi’s fingers, his hand drops away to hang back at his side, limp.

There’s a moment’s pause before Levi takes Eren’s hand in his own, lacing their fingers together and squeezing.

The gesture is so intimate that Nile has to fight not to look away.

And in the next moment he wishes that he _had_.

Levi tugs Eren into his space, almost so close that their hips brush together, and turns his head toward him. Eren’s head tilts a little to meet his eyes, and Nile can see the deep red that’s gathered in his cheeks. They stop, for only a second, and Nile almost stumbles.

With his free hand, Levi brings Eren’s head toward him to tap their foreheads together, and if the hallway hadn’t been so empty—a contrast to every other one they’d been in—Nile is sure he would’ve missed the soft, exhaled sound that Eren had made. His cheeks go darker, and the two of them start walking again, and Nile has no _fucking_ idea what he’s supposed to say after seeing that.

It was too much of _something_ for words.

(“ _where the fuck are you taking my jedi?_ ” Levi’s voice had been shrill with panic, his shoulders shaking with emotions that Nile could name but didn’t want to. Levi had reached out for Eren as they’d taken him away, having gone around where Levi had planted himself in their way. He’d reached out and found nothing, and he’d been heartbroken. Eren, for his part, had been too stone-faced to speak at all.

It’s so different to see them in love and _happy._ )

Nile stops abruptly behind them, clearing his throat to let them know. They stop once more, turning to look at him in tandem—Levi with an eyebrow arched and Eren with a frown that could be concern. He doesn’t know his face well enough to be sure _what_ , exactly, the frown is for.

“The lobby is at the end of this hallway to the left,” Nile tells them. “Thanks for _allowing_ me the exercise in your gracious benevolence.”

A fleeting smile touches Levi’s lips and there might be a hint of gratitude there. “Sure, you piece of shit,” is what he gets in response. “Any time you need to go out for walkies, we’re at your service.” He pauses, absently swinging the hand that’s joined with Eren’s. “Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”

Nile regrets the joke the instant it touches his tongue, but says it anyway. “It’s always _short_ notice with you.”

Eren’s hidden cough sounds suspiciously like laughter.

“Fuck off,” Levi replies, tugging Eren along down the hallway at a slightly more meandering pace.

“Don’t get into any shit today, please,” Nile calls after them. “I’m getting _really_ fucking sick of bureaucracy!”

No laughter follows him down the corridor after he turns around and he didn’t expect any. The breathing room he’s given is reward enough. And, frankly, it gives him enough time to be embarrassed at what he saw.

(It had felt like there was nothing else in the universe but the two of them and he’d been caught peeking.

Fucking _unbelievable_ , really.)

-

Sometimes Levi forgets that Coruscant exists outside the nighttime that makes it vibrant. But, like they always have, the orbital mirrors redirect sunlight to give the city-planet its daylight hours, and it’s no less beautiful for the lack of neon that can be seen. People flow past them in either direction—minor political aides leaving the Senate for the day, the afternoon/evening shifts arriving at the Coruscant Security Force Headquarters for a shift change. Life continues on the world that never sleeps, and the two of them are right in the middle of it.

And, if the scenery is anything to go by, this is the nicer end of things. After all, the Senate building is a stone’s throw from here, and everyone knows that politicians like to eat fine if they’re going to be participating in meeting after meeting.

Levi doesn’t really get to make it up this way that much. From the way Eren is _still_ standing and glancing at all the store fronts and restaurants even after having been working down here for a couple months, it doesn’t get old _that_ fast. There are more cafés on this walkway alone than there are in the entire undercity and Tatooine _combined_. There’s a lot of space for other things, apparently, when you’re not trying to maximize your real estate in terms of how many bars you can open.

Now that they’re out of the CSF main building, their pace has dropped to an admirable walk. Eren’s sleeve almost obscures their laced fingers from view as they swing back and forth gently, and the fabric brushing against the heel of Levi’s hand tickles, a little. Or maybe it’s just the warmth of things, the way the universe suddenly feels entirely in balance.

Either of those things are cause for celebration.

“Do you want to get an early dinner?” Levi asks, slowing them both down even further, to the point that the other pedestrians break around them in a stream. It’s a parody of the night before in the sublevels—but things are brighter up here. “Before we head back.”

Eren blinks, the reflected sunlight catching on his eyes while his irises hold it, making them close from the inside out. It makes Levi’s breath catch just to _look_ at him.

(He savours last night’s kisses as if they’d happened years ago, reliving them in every available inch of space. He wonders if Eren knows.)

“What?” Eren replies, shaking out his hair before turning a baffled expression on Levi, their hands still swaying between them.

“Dinner. Do you want to get dinner before we head back? I’ve gotten drinks down here once or twice, but I’ve never eaten anything, and I figured that we have a little bit of time to kill before we have to head back. It’s not like we’ve got any super pressing responsibilities today, and we got this errand out of the way.” Levi shrugs, not jostling their hands at all. “We slept in for the first time pretty much ever and it couldn’t hurt to get out of the Temple for something _other_ than business, for once.”

Eren’s nose wrinkles, but it isn’t in disgust. There’s confusion rubbing at Levi’s sinuses in the Force, as if Eren honestly doesn’t understand where he’s going with this.

“Why?” Eren cuts him another glance, arching both eyebrows. “Why dinner, I mean.” A small, amused smile tries to lift the corners of his lips and it’s doing an admirable job for something that hasn’t looked at home on his mouth in months. “Erwin paying you a salary now?”

Levi scoffs quietly. “ _Hardly_. You think you’re the only one with an emergency fund? I was making money before you could _walk_. I wasn’t just going to relinquish it and put myself in debt to a _different_ organization. Get dinner with me.” He squeezes Eren’s hand, brushing up against him in the Force, savouring the fact that he doesn’t pull away. “It’s what couples do, right?”

The hints of giddiness that had been dancing across Eren’s face drop away suddenly, along with most of the colour that had been sitting in his cheeks since Levi had taken his hand in the hallway. He stops in the middle of the walkway, looking for all the world like Levi had just slapped him across the face.

“Unless,” Levi continues, backpedaling faster than he ever has in his _life_ , “you don’t want to. Couple-stuff is... hard, probably. I get that. Shit, I—“

“That’s not—“ Eren’s eyelids flutter as if he’s too nervous to properly blink, “I didn’t mean that. I just—why not eat dinner back at home?”

“Because?” Levi frowns. “I want to _take_ you somewhere. It’s what couples do.”

Eren’s voice is a whisper when he speaks. “But then everyone will _know_.”

Levi feels his own frown deepen, feels an itch starting beneath his skin, rubbing like sand against his bones. “That’s the _point_.” Eren’s fingers twitch in his grip but he doesn’t make any further moves to pull away. He drifts in the Force like a cloud, slipping away when Levi tries to grab for him. “Eren, I _want_ people to see us.” He holds up their hands to make a point and watches as the colour returns to Eren’s face in the form of embarrassment.

“I—everyone will _know_. How will—everyone will know.” His brows furrow, creating a crease between his eyebrows that Levi wants to soothe away with his thumb. It takes a heartbeat for him to realise that he can do so, and so he does, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the crease until it disappears.

In the Force, Eren solidifies, just a little.

(“ _what does the force say about me?_ ”)

“I _know_. I want to be with you in _public_. I want everyone to see me with you. I want everyone to look at you, and at me, and know that we’re together. I want people to see us and say, ‘wow, those two Jedi are fucking disgusting to behold, look at how in love that short asshole is with the tall one. _Gross_.’”

Levi watches Eren’s lips twitch in a smile and he’s dying to kiss them.

“I want everyone to know, Eren. I fucking love you, and the only person whose opinion has ever mattered is yours.” Eren’s fingers are tight around his own and the Force trembles around him. “And do _you_ want to be together?”

Eren nods without a pause between it and the end of the question and Levi can feel his heart scrape along the underside of his ribs. “Yes,” is what he says, a breathless whisper. The planet goes quiet inside Levi’s head, the constant hum of countless pinpoints of life being snuffed out, for just a _moment_ , by the look at Eren gives him. “ _Yeah_. I want to—yeah. I do.”

“So let’s get dinner.”

When Eren laughs, Levi feels himself go to pieces. His bones shake apart and the stardust left behind gathers in his lungs and makes it hard to breathe. He figures that Eren has enough breath for the both of them, laughing like he is, and so he brings him into a kiss that feels bright and deep and all-consuming. It swallows him up and holds him close and suddenly Eren is clinging to him, his free hand going white knuckled against his spine, pulling at the fabric of his robe.

His lips tingle with he pulls away with a gasp, finding Eren’s eyes on his face, pupils blown wide—event horizons, swallowing the light and holding onto it. His eyelashes kiss his cheeks when he blinks and Levi almost kicks himself for envying them.

“What was that for?” Eren sounds disappointed at the fact that they’re _not_ kissing in public, despite his earlier reservations, and it makes Levi’s knees go just a little bit weak with relief.

“You’re beautiful,” Levi tells him. “You’re beautiful and I wanted to kiss you, so I did.”

“Oh,” Eren says like Levi just lied to him. “Okay.” A pause as Eren lifts his free hand to drag his thumb along Levi’s lower lip, as if considering another kiss, before dropping his hand away entirely and flushing deep. “You said dinner. I think—let’s do dinner.”

Levi almost wishes he hadn’t suggested it at all so that he could drag Eren back to the Temple and kiss him again. But, naturally, _almost_ is the key word, and he’s beginning to come to terms with the fact that he can, and will, kiss Eren whenever he damn well wants to. As long as Eren keeps kissing back like he does. As long as there’s still stardust on his tongue when he pulls away.

As long as it’s Eren he’s kissing.

(“ _so_ ,” Levi will say when they’ve sat down for dinner in a small café where every single patron keeps glancing over toward their corner, “ _did i ever get to tell you that i saw an angel?_ ”

“ _that's a load of bantha shit,_ ” Eren will reply, having foregone the offer of another pulupa fruit cocktail, having had his fill of it for a while, he said. There will be a coffee between his hands, instead, and Levi will joke about it later—about how cops never seem to touch anything without contaminating it with caffeine. “ _there’s no such thing._ ”

“ _no_ ,” Levi will reply. “ _there is. they look like the most beautiful person in the galaxy._ ” He will pause for effect. “ _and they had your face._ ”

Eren will stare at him and the Force will be unreadable for all the emotions he’ll be feeling at once. And then he will say, “ _you’re so full of shit._ ”

Levi will smile—small and soft and fond. Because he has all the time in the world to convince Eren of the truth, to tell him about the things he’d missed after his arrest, to tell him that he’d missed him every single second that he wasn’t within arm’s reach. Levi will tell him everything that he can. About how he knew he was in love on Mandalore. About how he’d known he was in love when he saw the angel on Duros. About how he knows he’s in love every time he feels Eren’s touch in the Force.

So, for now, all Levi will say is, “ _shut up_.” And then, “ _i love you_.”

There will be time for everything else later.)


End file.
